The Warehouse Group takeover saga continues

One to watch this week.

The Warehouse[WHS.NZX] takeover saga continues Tuesday 28 April (NZ Time) with the Court of Appeal case, and runs for a further 3 days. There will be no immediate decision, with weeks more to wait, well, we have waited nearly 2 years so far, and the likelihood that Foodstuffs and Woolworths Australia [WOW.ASX] will be able to make a bid looks more likely than not.

The Commerce Commission(CC), who are appealing against the affirmative decision in the High Court last year, have struck it lucky to some extent, with spiraling food prices making emotive headlines all over the place but it any judge worth his pay packet will look past this temporary wave of bio fuel inspired food inflation and make a fully emotionless decision.

The CC have a wafer thin case and any new arguments for their case will probably pin themselves on the possibility that The Warehouse and its "Extra" food format will be a serious player sometime in the distant future.

The Warehouse Group @ Share Investor

Long vs Short: The Warehouse Group
Warehouse bidders ready to lay money down
The Warehouse set to cut lose "extra" impediment
The Warehouse sale could hinge on "Extra" decision
The case for The Warehouse without a buyer
Foodstuffs take their foot off the gas
Woolworths seek leave to appeal to Supreme Court
Warehouse appeal decision imminent
Warehouse decision a loser for all
Warehouse Court of appeal decision in Commerce Commission's favour
MARKETWATCH: The Warehouse
The Warehouse takeover saga continues
Why did you buy that stock? [The Warehouse]
History of Warehouse takeover players suggest a long winding road
Court of Appeal delays Warehouse bid
The Warehouse set for turbulent 2008
The Warehouse Court of Appeal case lay in "Extras" hands
WHS Court of Appeal case could be dismissed next week
Commerce Commission impacts on the Warehouse bottom line
The Warehouse in play
Outcomes of Commerce Commission decision
The fight for control begins soon

Share Investor Forum-Discuss this topic


Unlikely given that The Warehouse itself has largely lost interest in the concept itself.

While many may groan when I mention government interference halting the other long running takeover saga, the Auckland Airport bid by the Canadians, this writer wouldn't put anything past New Zealand's socialist government putting their sticky mitts into this deal, should the Court of Appeal case come down in The Warehouse favour.

Whatever the machinations maybe in our courts this week, the outcome will be closely watched and a positive outcome for The Warehouse will be a serious shot in the arm for our local stockmarket, given its rather stagnant showing over the last 6 months.

Many shareholders will reinvest the collective north of NZ$ 2 billion proceeds of a sale in other shares on the NZX.

Keep watching here for further updates on this story.


Related Links

The Warehouse Financial Data

• Summary
• Charts
• Dividends
• News
• Announcements
• Price History
• Related Securities

Related Amazon reading




The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and How It's Transforming the American Economy by Charles Fishman
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $8.50
Usually ships in 24 hours


c Share Investor 2008 & 2009

TIME Magazine slips inconvenient truths past it's readers

An absolute cracker of an editorial in a business paper that I picked up while in a recent visit to San Francisco.

The paper gives a more enlightened and investigative view rather than the left wing drivel that comes from the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post.

On issues like so-called climate change the papers writers are spot on. In reference to the latest dross written in this weeks TIME magazine the magazines authors leave out the inconvenient truth(thanks Al) about an article they wrote in 1974 about an impending ice age. They do not reference THAT article in their 2008 diatribe.

Politicians in New Zealand and globally would do well to pick up and read such fact based writing, for the fairy dust stuff they are basing economically disastrous rorts such as carbon trading and associated taxes is only going to see an end to our way of life as we know it.

Food shortages because of wasteful and environmentally unfriendly bio-fuel production is only the start.

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Friday, April 18, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Media: Time calls green "the new red, white and blue" and likens global warming to the fight against Nazism and fascism. As it insults World War II vets, the magazine seeks to impose a tyranny all its own.

We never cease to be amazed by the inability of the left to feel shame and its lack of reverence for America and those who defend its freedoms, including the right to be stupid. The cover of the April 21 issue of Time, taking the famous Joe Rosenthal photo of Marines planting our flag on the blood-soaked island of Iwo Jima and replacing our flag with a tree, qualifies for obscenity of the year.

It echoes the greenie theme first advanced by Al Gore in his book "Earth In The Balance" that the internal combustion engine is the greatest threat in the history of mankind. Gore and Bill Clinton have both said that global warming is ultimately a greater threat than terrorism.
That, admitted Time managing editor Richard Stengel, was the thinking behind the cover story. "One of the things we do in this story," he said last week on MSNBC, "is we say there needs to be an effort along the lines of preparing for World War II to combat global warming and climate change."

This trivializing of the sacrifice of American blood and treasure to defend freedom ignores the fact that in World War II we faced a real enemy with a terrible agenda. The bombs that fell on Pearl Harbor were quite real, not the output of some badly fed computer model.
"Global warming may or may not be a significant threat to the United States," Tim Holbert, a spokesman for the American Veterans Center, told the Business and Media Institute (BMI): "The Japanese Empire on February 1945, however, certainly was, and this photo trivializes the most recognizable moment of one of the bloodiest battles in U.S. history."

It was not that long ago that the media, including Time, was singing a different tune and waging a different war.

An article in its June 24, 1974, issue entitled "Another Ice Age?" told of how, "when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe, they find that the atmosphere has been gradually cooler for the past three decades."

Time spoke then of a "global climatic upheaval" and "climatological Cassandras who are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."

Reputable scientists and satellite and other observations have noted another cooling period under way since 1998. Declining solar activity in the current cycle correlates with other cool periods in Earth's history. It ties in perfectly with climate history that shows the warming and cooling of Earth is a natural and cyclical process.

A man who knows a little about fighting totalitarianism, Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, wrote in the Financial Times last year:

"As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning."

Lt. John Keith Wells, leader of the platoon that raised the flags on Mt. Suribachi, told BMI: "That global warming is the biggest joke I've ever known." He knows a real enemy and a real threat when he sees one.

Related Political Animal reading

Carbon Credit Trading puts markets at extreme risk

Unstoppable global warming

Global Warning: Tax Iceberg Ahead

Kyoto critic comes to town - Sunday Star Times

Of Tulip Bulbs and tooth Fairies

Ponder the Maunder - 15 Yr old Kristin Byrne explodes the GW myth

c Political Animal 2008

Notes from San Francisco

Just some observations before I kick off writing on the Share Investor Blog again next week.

I have spent the last week and a bit touring around San Francisco and attending the wedding of my Texas outlaws.

I have been commenting for several months on the nature of the credit crunch, economic conditions and things sub prime and it is interesting to see and hear the reality of things when you actually get to speak to the people that it is most directly affecting.

The majority of individuals that I spoke to were largely uninterested in talking about important issues like the coming election or the state of the economy but those who were seemed unconcerned about a probable recession and generally viewed such things with a stoic matter of fact nature.

Getting on with the business at hand seemed the order of the day.

Talking to Chuck from Manhattan, a real estate investor with years of experience, on the airport shuttle to our hotel in Geary Street, I was engaged by the positive attitude to his investment outlook. He was in San Francisco to do business and back in New York he was buying commercial property with a view to a long term gain by buying run down properties on Long Island and refurbishing for higher rentals.

Americas favorite pass time, shopping, seemed in good health in San Fran, as I imagined it would be, and tourists like my good self, from inside and outside America, were spending bucket loads of money on food, goods and services.

On the unfortunate side,depending on which side you are on, one of my Texas outlaws has just spent US$220,000.00 on a foreclosed house in Dallas that cost the previous owners $325,000.00. She has a 30 year mortgage at 5.75%! Kind of puts New Zealand rates of nearly 10% in the shade huh?

In a related matter, it seems the sub-prime lesson hasn't been learnt yet. Glancing at bank windows with "sweetheart" interest rates of 0% for business loans left me with a cold uncomfortable feeling. Like the sub prime loans for mortgages the low rates were for a limited time, after which more substantial rates would kick in.

I know there is cheap state funded credit out there but I'm just hoping the borrowers are such that they can afford to repay their loans. We don't want to be re-visiting a similar credit blowout story a few years from now.

Finally I'm heartened and disgusted at the same time by the huge numbers of "homeless" people begging for money on the streets on San Francisco.

Heartened because at least Americans don't hide their indigent by handing out welfare and disgusted because, well, these people are walking the streets and have no shame anymore.

American capitalism at its best, or worst, depending on ones world view.

Oh, the Golden Gate was lovely...Dude.

Related Share Investor reading

State backed Sub-prime Mortgages in NZ a recipe for disaster
Current credit crunch a blessing in disguise
What happened to risk?

c Share Investor 2008

Helen Clark: Ian Wishart's "Absolute Power" book

www.helenclarkbook.com

Looking for Ian Wisharts full account of the donations for passports scandal involving Yang Liu, Shane Jones and Dover Samuels, currently engulfing the Labour Party in October 2008? 

Please go here.

Related Political Animal reading

Labour's State control out of control
Trevor Mallards anti Violence advert
Sign anti smacking petition
Anti smacking law puts young boy at risk
Electoral Finance Bill: The purpose is clear
Ian Wishart: Passport Scandal- two ministers, one MP implicated

I must have been asleep over the last 3 weeks since this wee ditty was announced.

Now I'm not a big Ian Wishart fan but I'm guessing that this is going to have a decent sort of impact when it comes out and as Wishart has said in his statement below he might be lucky not to have an injunction served on it by the great leader herself.

Having said that the book's contents may have me dancing and singing like some demented Labour Party member with a fetish for Kenny Rogers and John Key and I could well celebrate with a cheeseburger and Coke, before the Food Police pass new sweeping powers to stop me having a coronary.

On the other hand I could get so angry with malice over the mere thought of the cover photo of the beautiful leader and throw an item of clothing at my child, get arrested and charged with assault under the new anti smacking law and then have the case thrown out of court.

Its serious stuff and deserves far more serious consideration than I can give it in my present mood but this is probably all the subject of the book requires.

COMING SOON: PRE-ORDER THIS TITLE NOW OR RISK MISSING OUT! JUST DAYS AWAY

*APRIL 21*

Ian Wishart's major new title, "ABSOLUTE POWER: The Helen Clark Years" is coming soon. We used to joke “buy it before they ban it”. But now the Electoral Finance Act has been passed. All we can say is, if you don’t pre-order a copy for Day One, you might not get a chance on Day Two.

SEE THE ONLINE TV COMMERCIAL FOR ABSOLUTE POWER BY CLICKING HERE

c Political Animal 2008