Media Roundup: Intermezzo

As Week 7 of the Conrad Black trial ends, the media reports are beginning to dwindle:

1. From the Ontario edition of Business Edge, an opinion piece from a former employee of Conrad Black, through the Calgary Herald, which argues that Mr. Black, at the very least, acts like a guilty man. It's one of the few explicitly pro-comeuppance pieces published in the last few weeks.

2. Janet Whitman of the New York Post notes that there was one document that Richard Thompson did not skim - a Wells Notice, announcing a planned civil action against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission. "Thompson said he read the November 2005 notice - essentially a warning from securities regulators that they were considering a civil suit against him for signing off on the alleged fraud- 'word for word.'" Also included is the jurors' reaction to this admission.

3. From the Calgary Sun, an abridged version of the AP report, by Mike Robinson, on the cross-examination of Mr. Thompson. The New York Times also has a slightly different version of it.

4. Paul Waldie's latest, webbed by the Globe and Mail, describes a defense motion to have any statement made by David Radler on the stand consistent with his Aug. 18, 2005 testimony to a grand jury ruled inadmissible as evidence, on the grounds that "those statements are Mr. Radler's personal conclusions and do not offer any proof that the other men knew about the conspiracy." It also has excerpts from those statements Mr. Radler made back then.

5. From Rick Westhead of the Toronto Star, a report that begins by noting how long the trial will take, with advance warning that the defense is planning for a lengthy list of witnesses too. After recounting a question made in redirect and Mr. Thompson's answer to it, and noting that Mr. Thompson paid for his wife's airfare, the report ends with a mention of - a first in the trial - recross examination, by Eddie Greenspan. The recross was prompted by Eric Sussman's attempt, in redirect examination, to justify the 1997 trip to London and a Hollinger Int'l company dinner held there as a legitimate business expense. (It's almost a sure guess that the defense will copy, as much as is practicable, Csr. Sussman's series of questions once they have a chance to justify the Bora Bora trip and Barbara Black's 60th birthday party as legitimate too. As to whether Csr. Sussman will retool the defense's questioning strategy for the prosecution's cross-examination at that point, it's harder to say.)

6. An abridged report by Mary Vallis has been webbed by the Regina Leader-Post. It focuses upon Ron Safer's cross-examination of Mr. Thompson.

7. The latest report by the Chicago Sun-Times' Mary Wisniewski focuses upon the redirect examination. Her report has a sidebar which notes that Mr. Radler will be preceded by "KPMG auditor Robert Musur."

8. The Chicago Tribune has webbed Rudolph Bush's latest report on the trial, as it appeared in the print edition. Near its end, it mentions that Csr. Sussman demonstrated, with regard to that 1997 trip to London, that "Thompson paid his wife's airfare, stayed in a less expensive hotel and that the trip clearly revolved around business."

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The Tribune also has a feature piece, by Susan Chandler, about the changing duties of the members of boards of directors. Belying the old stereotype of the snoozy board, "[t]oday's board members are paying a lot more attention, corporate governance experts say, and are more aware of their own responsibilities as independent overseers than they were just a few years ago. They also are more worried about getting personally sued." It details the post-Enron sea change that has made the position of board member (especially member of an audit committee) more onerous, as hammered into place by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Also noted in the article is "the number of active CEOs on outside boards has plunged in recent decades.... Among CEOs who still serve on other company's boards, the average number of commitments has fallen from an average of 2.2 boards to 1.4, a 36 percent decrease."


After a hiatus that was even longer than the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, David Frum has returned to the Conrad Black trial beat. He notes that the business media is slowly swinging around to Mark Steyn's perspective, and that the responsible straw was the cross-examination of James R. Thompson.

Fans of Tom Bower's book, Conrad & Lady Black - Dancing On The Edge, will like Douglas Bell's latest Toronto Life trial blog entry. Continuing on a theme that Mr. Bower himself used - Rupert Murdoch as a more able foil to Conrad Black - Mr. Bell praises Mr. Murdoch for his audacious bid for Dow, Jones.

Finally, in "Finlay ON Governance," a post that reveals the Hollinger Int'l board of directors to be somewhat of a rogue's gallery. The implosion of the audit committee's testimony isn't very surprising in this context.