Glencore And Sino Forest: Make Paper Money From Hard To Find Trees
THIS is really a rather interesting little story.
You know how everyone likes to go on about how the banks are all thieving bastards, corrupt to the core, hang them all and close ’em down?
Even, why haven’t there been more prosecutions?
Well, the answer to that last question is because while they were all very silly there wasn’t in fact much going on that was illegal.
However, over on the other side of the world we’ve got a lovely little story going on about a company called Sino Forest. Essentially, Chinese company floats on the stock market in Canada, raises $3 billion or so over the years to buy Chinese forests.
So now peeps are going looking for these lovely forests that were bought with the $3 billion: and they’re proving very hard to find indeed. There is even talk that this company might be the largest theft ever: $3 billion entirely down the drain.
What makes this all much more fun, much more than just slant eyes ripping off gullible fools is that one of the independent directors was Simon Murray and he’s now the Chairman of Glencore: the newest company to join the FTSE 100 on our own dear London stock market.
Note, independent directors do not run companies: they are though supposed to keep an eye on what is being done by those running them. No, we are in banker territory heree (Mr. Murray used to be a banker), nothing illegal has been done but it does rather look a bit silly, not having spotted what was happening.
But then bankers are bankers, eh?
Posted: 5th, September 2011 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink