The ‘TSE’ tops 10,000! “Oh, Canada!—”
[but there’s no joy in Calgary, and this DOES take the fun out of guessing when TLM will decline below $30.]
Eric Reeves [March 24, 2000]
Smith College ereeves@sophia.smith.edu
Northampton, MA 01063
413-585-3326
TLM’s meltdown continues, even as euphoria sweeps the TSE—soaring for its first ever close over 10,000! Bravo, Canada!
But let’s do the numbers, as they say. TLM down for the eighth straight trading session, and the ninth out of the last ten (the tenth being “unchanged). And TLM closed with a flourish—down $.80 with a rush toward $35.00 at the finish! (For comparison’s sake Alberta Energy [AEC] was essentially unchanged today.) That brings the decline since the early September ’99 high to almost 30% again.
How many of us still think the “Sudan factor” has been fully discounted by the market??? Does Buckee think he’s getting his $250 million buy-back’s worth???
Pain, relentless capital market pain—and then more pain: that’s the name of the divestment game. And now there’s a new entrant into the House of Capital Market Pain, promising much more additional bad “PR rub-off” for TLM.
Yesterday, BP/Amoco agreed to take on as much as $1 billion (US) of the PetroChina IPO slated to start trading on the NYSE at the end of the first week in April. Since there are still no US buyers willing to commit to this ghastly IPO albatross around Goldman Sachs’ neck, they’ve been doing some back-room dealing. $350 million from some Hong Kong oil cronies, and now this BP deal (with Chinese gas concessions clearly key).
But BP has walked into a hornets’ nest! Besides painting itself with a bright divestment bull’s-eye, a North American boycott of BP was immediately initiated, spurred by press releases, instantaneous media coverage, and emailing “chain letters.” High-profile picketing of stations (BP’s are the most numerous in North America) will commence soon, with participants including the extraordinarily broad coalition of activists that has been the talk of the financial press over the last couple of weeks.
This equation—oil development in Sudan sustaining genocidally destructive civil war—is one that TLM has certainly heard all too much of. But now there’s going to be more—much, much more.
Boycott BP!