By: Mark Fitzgerald If you invested $100 five years ago in the Toronto-based holding company Conrad Black used to control his now-collapsed newspaper industry, your stake would be worth $9.97 as of last March 31.
That's one of the nuggets of information in the proxy notice for the Hollinger Inc.'s annual meeting, scheduled for Sept. 27 in Toronto.
The 41-page notice, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, documents the financial sickliness of the company, which has been beset by litigation and regulatory actions following the alleged improper financial manipulations by former Chairman Black and other principals. Hollinger's principal asset is an approximately 66.8% voting stake and 17.4% equity interest in Sun-Times Media Group (STMG), publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and dozens of Chicago-area newspapers. This summer a federal jury in Chicago convicted Black of three counts of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice for improperly pocketing phony non-compete fees from papers sold by STMG, then known as Hollinger International.
At the same time Hollinger Inc. stock was losing more than 90% of its value, the proxy noted, the same one hundred Canadian dollars invested in a composite index of the Toronto Stock Exchange and the S&P 500 on the New York Stock Exchange would have more than doubled in value to C$216.65.
Despite the dire straits of the company's stock value, the annual meeting notice does not schedule any big corporate battles. The only matters up for vote are continuing the contract with its auditing firm and reelecting five directors, including CEO G. Wesley Voorheis.
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