The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Page 4 THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday September 1989 the HERALD OUTLOOK is published each Saturday by the HILLS HERALD Home Newspaper of Hills A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited Ontario L7G Second lass Mail Outlook Allan Silber cant make all his shareholders happy 8772201 Number 8778822 STAFF PUBLISHER David A Beattie EDITOR Brian MacLeod AD MANAGER Dan Taylor Donna Kelt Km SPORTS FDITOK Colin ACCOUNTING Diane Smith I Joan SNAFU by Bruce Beattie No matter what he does Allan Silber cant seem to make his shareholders happy Mr Silber is the 40yearold founder of Counsel Corp parent of Counsel Trust and Since he took Counsel public three years ago investors have not placed a high enough value on Counsels stock In Mr Silbers opi nion A superb promoter he has turned himself inside out trying to persuade investors how wonderful his company is Counsels shares traded at before the stock market crash For most of the past two years they languished in the range of or Last year Mr Silber and his partners tried to reward shareholders through a com plicated plan to reorganize the company But the plan fell through because government regulators found it too confusing PLANNED Finally exasperated Mr offered in June to buy the company back Had he done so he would have ended up with 55 per cent of Counsel Albert would have had per cent and Edward Sonshine Counsels executive vicepresident 10 per cent They offered minority shareholders a share a 50per cent premium over the average trading price of the previous month All of a sudden shareholders woke up If these guys are willing to pay a share the stock must be worth a lot more they reason ed So they dug in their heels Counsel stock shot a high of in anticipation of a more generous offer But by then Mr Silber had had it He had no com pelling reason to take the company private So when independent evaluations showed that his com pany was indeed worth more than a share he and his partners withdrew their bid Minority shareholders were chastened and the stock dropped back to the 11 range The whole thing is ironic given how we tried to increase value for shareholders all these years one Counsel insider said when you finally find a way to do it they come back and say its not good enough TAKE IT THEN But the story doesnt end there On Wednesday Mr Silber an nounced that he hoped to raise 6 million by giving shareholders rights to buy new common shares at a share Shareholders worried that their holdings would be diluted Part of the reason Mr Silber and his partners wanted to go private was so they could raise money more easily on the debt market As a public company they have to be more conservative in their financ ing hence the equity issue Theres nothing left to eat We burned all the crops to appease the god of famine Food poisoning costs 13 billion a year Berrys World compote A 10year federal study of salmonella bacteria is developing into an intensive campaign to reduce food poisoning and the 1 billion it costs the economy each year A member of an Agriculture Department investigation team described the initiative as a massive undertaking and said an advisory group will soon be ap pointed to help In the drive to minimize the number of food poisonings Earlier this year a federal report said 22mlllion Canadians fall victim to food poisoning each year The average annual death toll is 31 Scientists have been concen trating on salmonella which they regard as the major villain among the different forms of food con- taminattoo Salmonella bacteria kill eight Canadians each year and infect more than Many vic tims develop unrelated illnesses such as arthritis cardiac pro blems diarrhea or food allergies At highest risk are infants the elderly and people suffering from unmune disorders Salmonella is a very ubiquitous type of organism explained Ruff of the departments meat and poultry products divi sion There are close to 2000 forms Its In vegetable products in all kinds of things not just In meat products It has been detected in milk pro ducts such as chocolates and cheeses and more recently in eggs There was a major salmonella scare in the UK earlier this year and Britons were they should hardcook their But investigators on the salmonella trail here have been concentrating on poultry In 1986 it was found that 51 to 72 per cent of broiler chickens checked at pro cessing plants were contaminated by the salmonella bacteria said the situation has not improved The consultative group proposed by officials in the salmonella pro gram will likely draw advisors from other departments such as health and welfare environment and consumer and corporate af fairs as well as from industry pro ducer and consumer organiza tions BROUGHT IN In the meantime said other Agriculture Depart ment staff veterans of campaigns to eradicate brucellosis and tuber culosis in cattle are being brought into the salmonella program The same successes however are not expected in the case of salmonella Dr said the Scandinavians have been working on a salmonella program for years and concluded that eradica tion is not a reasonable objective Were a little cautious of setting undue expectations he said But we are confident of significant reductions And results are not expected to be realized quickly The depart ment is prepared to extend the pro gram for at least years Were looking at a long haul Its not the kind of thing that can be approached with a shortterm quick fix said A number of possible control measures are being studied Dr Lowman said there are 17 points In the production and processing chain where salmonella can con taminate poultry Treatment of feed and feeding cycles and the water in poultry chilling tanks are being reviewed the controversial and as yet unap proved method of food irradiation is also considered one of the most effective means of destroying advertising sales Valois Teeter Roberts PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT Dave Hastings Annie MylesGilson Wilson CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT Marie Swedes turn backs on nuclear power Tucked away in the back corners of some newspapers recently was a story on Swedens nuclear pro gram The Swedes held referendum in 1980 that endorsed dismantling all 12 of the countrys reactors by 2010 Half Swedens power comes from those reactors Coincident ly 50 per cent of Ontarios power is produced in reactors soon to be with the completion of Darl ington station The news story quoted Swedish State Power Board vicepresident Nils on rising worries over the consequences of the coming shutdowns Energyintensive industries have put expansions on hold he said and there is a need to replace the lost power with alternatives These include pushing more con servation and investigating the usual exotic substitutes such as windmills but were quite aware that gas and coal will have to be us ed he said It is a glimpse of the future that Ontario Hydros antinuclear critics would like to see occur here True none of them have yet sug shutting down Hydros reactors although thats their eventual goal Their first aim is to prevent the building of a second fourreactor station at Darlington or its equivalent elsewhere Ontario Hydro chairman Robert Franklin has said that a decision needs to be made on a new plant by 1992 so that it can be functioning early in the next century The critics with the New Democratic Party and Energy Probe in the forefront argue forcefully that these power demands can be met by having Hydro buy private sector power and by baving Hydro forcefully promote conservation The cleverest idea revealed in a press conference here a while ago was to give out for free new energyefficient ap pliances such as refrigerators and heaters The theory was that the cost of the refrigerators would be more than matched by the savings created by the lower demand for But would it JUST MOVED THEM Franklin noted in a recent inter view oat such a giveaway scheme has been tried elsewhere and what happened was that people simply moved their inefficient old fridges to the basement Then there is the example of New York and air conditioners People said leaving your air conditioner on all day was wasteful If youre not home said Franklin So it was recommended that as you go to work in the morning you shut it off then when you come home In the evening you turn it back on again What Is clear already from the Swedish example is that whatever choice Hydro makes to meet the coming power crunch there Is no painless and inexpensive road to JCjajcjsjjtJ