CBC News has webbed a Canadian Press report with the first details of Paul Healy's testimony today. He related that "Conrad Black dismissed shareholder complaints about management fees as 'nonsense' and hoped to quash the 'epidemic of shareholder idiocy' before Hollinger International's annual meeting in 2002... Healy also told prosecutors that one of Black's co-defendants, Peter Atkinson, told him that some of the information being related to shareholders about the CanWest deal was inaccurate." The report itself elaborates on Mr. Black's words, either as written or as Mr. Healy remembers them, to prepare for that annual meeting, including a statement from Mr. Black saying that "he would have liked to 'blow their asses off.'"
Paul Waldie has written a report, webbed by the Globe and Mail, which has that curt quote, reproduced just above, in its first paragraph. The next notes that the quote came from an E-mail written by Mr. Black in 2002, and the next several ones add a context, which includes another more well-known E-mail from the time. The report also discloses this potential shift in prosecutorial strategy: "Earlier, the court heard that lead prosecutor Eric Sussman may call Hollinger shareholders as witnesses at the trial. Mr. Sussman's comments came during a brief hearing without the jury present as lawyers argued over edits to audiotapes of Hollinger shareholder meetings in 2002 and 2003.... Mr. Sussman indicated that he may call Gene Fox, who works for Cardinal Capital management, as a witness Mr. Fox raised concerns about several issues during the annual meetings. Mr. Sussman said the shareholders will testify that they did not know full details of the non-compete payments." The latter half of this report contains information posted earlier today.
Mr. Waldie also gave an interview on BNN, aired at 1:55 PM ET, in which he reported on more evidence from the prosecution. This morning was the first time that the jurors had heard Conrad Black's voice, thanks to an audio recording of his words at the 2001 Hollinger Int'l annual meeting (held in '02.) It was introduced by the prosecution to show that Mr. Black had misled shareholders. Before that tape was played, Mr. Healy testified about "a lot of complaints" and some questions from shareholders. He also testified about the concern he had felt that Mr. Black had taken the controversies too lightly in his post-shareholders'-meeting directors' meeting, and he testified that he had gone over Mr. Black's head to them. As a result, Conrad Black left several angry voice mails to the effect that it was his company, not Mr. Healy's. (These tid-bits are, of course, old news to Black watchers. One unanswered question about this incident, though: was Mr. Healy a shareholder in Hollinger Int'l at that time? If so, then a case could be made that he wasn't plainly insubordinate.) The jurors were paying attention - all of them. They were taking notes through this part of the prosecution's case. It's difficult to say, though, how influential this part of the case has been. Mr. Healy will probably be on the stand for the rest of the week. Then, some testimony about the 13 boxes will be given, and then the prosecution's case is "pretty much done."
An updated CP report, by Romina Maurino and webbed by 570 News, has more details of the going-over-the-CEO's-head incident that Mr. Healy is testifying about. It says that Mr. Healy testified to knocking on the door of David Radler and Mark Kipnis before deciding to go to the board. For meeting with them, he had later received three angry voice messages from Mr. Black. "'He said that I had overstepped my bounds,'" Healy said, adding Black told him: 'This is my company, I'm the controlling shareholder and I'll decide what the governor (Thompson) needs to know and when.'" (Interestingly, Mr. Black had not said "I'm your boss," according to both present testimony and past writings on this incident.)
Andrew Stern of Reuters has written an article on today's testimony so far, which begins with: "Jurors at Conrad Black's fraud trial heard a tape on Tuesday of angry shareholders questioning millions of dollars in payments Black and other executives had received, and they were read a memo in which the former media baron excoriated his company's investors as idiots." Just after, it refers to Mr. Healy's evidence as "show-and-tell testimony". The rest of the article reports on the 2001 annual meeting and the preparations for it, and also passes on some questions Mr. Black had faced and his answers to them.
The Bloomberg report, by Bob Van Voris and Andrew Harris, recounts the highlights of today's testimony so far, but adds a solicitation of a comment from Tweedy, Browne analyst Laura Jereski about the events of 2002 being introduced into evidence today. She declined.
Mary Vallis also has a report out, webbed by the Financial Post. According to Ms. Vallis, Mr. Healy testified that the angry voice messages came after Mr. Healy had "called Mr. Radler and 'pleaded with him' to have lunch with Mr. Thompson and relay what had happened at the shareholders' meeting." With regard to a 1998 incident in which Mr. Healy was, in Mr. Black's estimation, insufficiently upbeat in a drafted reply to a negative posting that had appeared on a Yahoo! message board, he testified that soon after, "someone using the nickname 'enspector' posted a response on the Internet... 'It resembles strongly the language Mr. Black suggested I put in the posting,' Mr. Healy told the jury."
A brief AP summary, webbed by WQAD.com, has selected the 3-message reprimand as the highlight of today's testimony so far.
The first part of a further update of Ms. Maurino's earlier report, as webbed by 940 News, contains, among other additions, these items: Mr. Radler, after Mr. Healy had begged him to go to the directors, had "'chickened out,' Healy testified, and he doubted Radler would ever talk to Thompson." After relating Mr. Black's angry reaction, Mr. Healy further testified: "In a later e-mail, Black reiterated his opinion that the meeting 'went fairly well,' saying that there had been 'no threat of litigation ... and we fought (complaining shareholders Christopher) Browne and (Lee) Cooperman to a civilized standstill.'" Mr. Healy also testified about a later written request from Mr. Black to he: "'Please do your part in stamping out among our own personnel this nonsense that we have deprived them of value in their share options,' Black wrote. "Two years from now no one will remember any of this."
The near-end of a report by James Bone of the Times Online discloses a decision by the prosecution, not announced explicitly, to refrain from introducing E-mails from Conrad Black to his wife, Barbara. "The prosecution had said that it would use a computer disk containing 11,000 e-mails to demonstrate that Lord Black knew that his wife was billing personal expenses, such as jogging gear, to the company. But the judge, Amy St Eve, has declared Lord Black’s effort to claim 'marital privilege' for the e-mails 'moot' – apparently because the Government no longer plans to present them."
A more detailed AP report, webbed by the Chicago Daily Southtown, includes an excerpt from the shareholders' questioning of Mr. Black at the 2001 annual meeting: "'I don't understand why a corporation that has a market capitalization of $1 billion needs some outside organization to provide financial services to it,' Cooperman said."
Stephen Foley of The Independent has written a report that includes details on what Mr. Black had spent to renovate the 2nd floor apartment, and the smaller apartment that Holinger Int'l paid to renovate. From it: "The fallen media mogul spent $5,300 on heated towel rails, $6,000 on shower doors and $7,000 on window sashes as part of the overhaul, which is at the centre of one of the fraud charges against him."
Another itemization, containing one item, has been passed along by Mark Steyn: "The government today introduced, with great fanfare, an e-mail from Conrad Black to Paul Healy announcing that his bonus for the year 2002 would be $175,000. The prosecutors attached great significance to this, and so did Mr Healy, not least because he'd been expecting 250 grand."
And finally, an article in Medill Reports: Chicago is entitled "Former Hollinger exec implies Black himself posted stock info." Unlike the others above, it details the 1998 posting controversy in this way: "In one e-mail, Healy testified, Black wrote a script for Healy to publish in response to growing shareholder unrest about Hollinger earnings confusion, and said that if Healy wouldn’t, then Black might do it himself.
"'Dear Paul- Don’t be so straight-laced,' Black wrote after Healy refused to publish the script. 'Post anonymously if you must. What you wrote is worse than no response at all and makes us look like jerks.'"
"Healy then identified an anonymous post on Yahoo Finance made days after Healy again refused to publish the script, which matched word-for-word the script that Black had ordered Healy to post." The report itself continues at that point by noting that Mr. Healy has been granted immunity from prosecution "for his part in the alleged $74 million fraud on the company’s shareholders for which Black, Kipnis, and former company executives John Boultbee and Peter Atkinson are on trial."
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In his wrap-up of last weekend's top Conrad Black stories, Douglas Bell of the Toronto Life Conrad Black trial blog, after quoting some of Mr. Black's more quotable quotes from the Guardian interview, settles upon a fictional alter ego for "our Conrad"... Toad of Toad Hill.
Mark Steyn's burst of blog entries today include an interesting variance from his usual pro-vindication emphasis: the conclusion that Conrad Black had made a mistake by letting his name appear as "'The Lord Black of Crossharbour, PC, OC, etc, etc.'" on thje 2001 Hollinger Int'l annual report rather than as "Conrad M. Black." Paul Healy was genuinely concerned about it too, and told Mr. Steyn to his face back in May 2002. In a more recent entry, he reports that Judge St. Eve refused to let an unfiled draft report to the SEC into evidence. He, of course, complains about the "incredible leeway" Judge St. Eve has tended to grant the prosecution, but reads nothing into it except for the obvious inference.
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