In 2011, Pershing Square Capital Management acquired some 14.2% of Canadian Pacific Railway’s (CP) outstanding shares and proceeded to require several changes in the management and governance of the company. The CP board resisted fiercely these entreaties, which led to an intense proxy fight. Eventually, Pershing won the battle and brought in a new CEO and new board members and designed a new strategy for CP as well. Since the shakeup of the CP’s board and senior management, the company’s stock price has more than triple between 2011 and 2016. Furthermore, under the new management, CP increased operational efficiency, improved performance and enhanced competitiveness. These performance ratios and financial indicators show that CP benefited …show more content…
It is often the case that activist shareholders are only interested in the short-term profit; a strategy that is at odds with the interest of the company and the ordinary shareholders.
In 2016, for example, the hedge fund firm Pershing Square Capital Management sold its 9.8 million shares it held in CP. At that time, the stake was worth $1.9 billion at the railway's closing price of $192.49 per share on the Toronto Stock Exchange, while Pershing acquired the stock when it was trading at around $69 in 2011.
Although CP’s performance and efficiency improved after Pershing brought in a new management between 2011 and 2016, it seems that Pershing was primarily interested in the short-term profit from the investment in CP Rail and not in the long-run success and health of the company.
In the case of the bankruptcy of Sears, the company’s pensions were short of $300 million in 2018 while the firm’s shareholders had received 3 billion over the past few years. Some of payments went to the U.S. hedge fund ESL Investments and its CEO Eddie Lampert, who took control of Sears in 2005. Former Sear’s employees are understandably upset as it looks as if their pensions were sacrificed at the expense of a hedge fund firm’s
Finally, in order to complete a more accurate comparison between the two projects, we utilized the EANPV as the deciding factor. Under current accepted financial practice, NPV is generally considered the most accurate method of predicting the performance of a potential project. The duration of the projects is different, one lasts four years and one lasts six years. To account for the variation in time frames for the projects and to further refine our selection we calculated the EANPV to compare performance on a yearly basis.
9. How did the pension plan changes affect Harnischfeger’s financial statements in 1984? Are these changes likely to affect future profits?
On August 11, 1998, United States Amoco Corporation (Amoco) and The British Petroleum Company p.l.c. (BPC) announced the BPC merger with Amoco. With a combined number of participants of 40,000 and $7 billion investment assets under management, the merged pension and savings plan of the new company is viewed by both management and employees as a bellwether of the success of the merger. Therefore, the new investment team must be able to “harmonize” the very different two original plans.
As part of the sensor industry, The Flopping Fish Inc. is a technology based company that creates sensors for other businesses that can be utilized and in corporate in cameras, biometric devices, and labs. Our products allow us to enter into multiple and diverse arenas such as: genetics, power generation, and satellites.
The Sears Canada situation has put the former and current employees at the risk of not getting their full pensions and other benefits paid as promised by the company. This problem was raised due to the underfunding of the pension plan by the company. this deficit has but over 16,000 former and current Sears Canada employees at risk of not getting their full pensions. (MacDonald, 2017) This is due to the pensioner not having any priority’s when a company goes through their bankruptcy process. In order to help those who are affected by this, the government should take actions towards protecting and preserving the pension of the employees. The help of the government would help reduce other problems that will arise due to employees not getting their full pension. Such problems that would arise are; the burden on taxpayers to pay for the loss of the employees and how it is unfair and unethical for the employees to suffer from the company’s faults.
The intent of this memo is to answer questions regarding the pension plans and operating segments of the company we recently acquired with 100% ownership. This company has two operating segments, each with its own pension plan. Reporting requirements for these issues are explained below.
a. Stockholders at first reaped tremendous gains from their investments in Enron stock, because the company’s value rose a lot of quicker than market averages throughout the late Nineteen Nineties. In 2001, because the stock value folded, investors lost $70 billion in value. Each individual and institutional shareholders were hurt. Significantly blasted were Enron workers whose 401(k) retirement plans were heavily endowed in their company’s stock. Even shareholders who failed to own any Enron stock were hurt, as stock costs fell across the board within the wake of the scandal as investors doubted the integrity of the many companies’ monetary reports.
1. Adams espouses a “market first” analysis of opportunity by looking for discontinuities. Is this substantive or window-dressing? Do the four types of discontinuities represent applicable guidelines? Are they comprehensive, or are there other discontinuity templates that a venture investor would find useful?
This was evident with the purchase of Canadian Airlines, in 1999 (The National, 2003). With the purchase of this airline, Air Canada also inherited their estimated eight billion dollar debt (The National, 2003). Also inherited from the merger, were underappreciated employees and under trained employees who lacked morale (The National, 2003). In 2003, Air Canada filed for bankruptcy (The National, 2003), this was due to the large financial deficit, the economy and the underappreciated/paid employees. Although, this was a difficult time for the airline, this truly marked the change in how the airline is structured. In 2005, it marked the true return of Air Canada, they reached record breaking revenues and far exceeded anyone’s expectation, including their own. Currently Air Canada, is the largest Canadian Airline, which has a lot to do with their change in business strategy.
The proposed business venture, Arundel Partners, is an investment group which would purchase the sequels rights associated with all films produced by 1 or more selected U.S. movie production studios for a specified period of time, or a specified number of films. As your investment analysts, our goal is to assess the value of the sequel rights to allow a determination of the value of the overall investment as well as a reasonable price-per-film for the sequel rights.
In a democratic capitalist society being an activist investor is totally legal. The problem with those activists buying large position in companies is that they influence in the market, they buy up stock and force short time fixes that drive up the stock price so they manipulate stocks in they own interests.
Peter Browning has a new job; a new job with big issues. Browning was tasked with reinventing Continental White Cap (White Cap). White Cap was a market leader and continued to be profitable despite current market threats. With the evolving market, White Cap needed to adjust to the market demands to continue to be profitable in the future. The parent company, Continental Group Inc., realized this and felt like Browning was the right person for the job to implement change. Implementing change is difficult under the best of circumstances; even more difficult in a successful profitable company. Dick Hoffman, executive vice president of Continental Group acknowledged that Browning’s assignment put him “smack dab between a rock and a hard place.” (Jick & Peiperl, 2011, p. 210).
We are providing below the assumptions and other calculations we used while computing the WACC and the cash flows.
1. CSX wanted to merge with Conrail, because the consolidated company would have more than $8.5 billion in rail revenue and almost 70 % of the Eastern market. Gain in Operating Income from Cost Reduction would bring additional $370 million by the year 2000. Total gain from revenue increase would result in additional $180 million. And from the operating income would reach $550 million. Another important point in CSX-Conrail merger is the better competitive position in both long-haul and short-haul routes through cost reduction. The last reason for buying the Conrail was the fear of CSX Company to lose competitive advantage and as a result to lose a lot of revenue, if Conrail merge with
Arthur W. Perdue’s quest for excellence in the poultry business began in 1917. Perdue started his company as a table-egg poultry farm. He slowly expanded his egg market by adding a new chicken coop every year. Arthur’s son Frank joined the family business in 1939 after leaving school at the end of his the second year. In 1950 Frank took over leadership of Perdue Farms, which had over 40 employees at the time.