Good catch by someone on the Stop the Quarry facebook site:
" Both John Scherer and Joseph Izhakoff (Minebuster note:we met them on the CBC show where a 20 second pause seemed like 20 years and we met the Barney Rubble Double on Paiken the other night) are principals of Nationsrent Companies. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, this company provides rental equipment for construction and industrial customers in the U.S. They cater to general contractors, sub contractors, highway contractors, manufacturing plants and distribution centers. Very interesting.....Nationsrent is currently controlled by none other than our good friend Seth Klarman of The Baupost Group and Phoenix Rental Partners. Baupost bought Nationsrent out of bankruptcy in 2001 for $80 million. In 2006 Nationsrent was acquired by Sunbelt Rentals for a cool $1.05 billion. Sunbelt is currently one of the largest equipment rental companies in the U.S."
Did you catch that? Baupost bought it in 2001 for $80 million and sold FIVE years laters for $1 billion. Tidy profit for forty investors in the Baupost Group. Wonder how you turn a company around in five years to make that kind of profit or is it just shuffling paper and bamboozling buyers?
And Izhakoff's name first surfaced around here in 2009 : Joseph Izhakoff is president of the investor group trading under Highland Rail Group. In email responses to this newspaper, he says the rail line could serve as a spur to economic development - and would be complementary to farming operations. (In a technical sense, the farm purchaser and the rail bidder are separate corporate entities.
He goes on to say that his company, "Like our agreement with the Town of Orangeville, we are not against accommodating special interest groups, such as the snowmobilers and trails, however you can appreciate that we are not in those businesses and our priority will be continuing to provide, and expanding, rail service along the line"
Full article at this link:
http://www.citizen.on.ca/news/2009-03-26/regional_news/009.html
Do the snowmobile groups know about the rail line proposal? It wouldn't hurt to get them on board to add to our numbers. Highland is trying to take the fun out of everything.
ReplyDeleteYes they know.
ReplyDeleteThe snowmobile group made a presentation to Dufferin County about three years ago, opposition to the fact they have spent money on maintaining the bed and then there was discussion about selling the bed wtihout notifying them. Then funny enough, this past winter, Highlands "donated" a club house for them-a vacant garage on one of the properties on Hwy 10 on which they demolished a house and they have been silent ever since.
ReplyDelete