"GREED" my Butt...
Again, How long have you worked for NWA?
How much stock have you used to wipe your butt because thats all it is good for?
How many times have you been promised something only to have it turn out to be a lie?
That brings up a question I've been meaning to ask. When NWA stock was trading in the $60's, and series C stockholders had the option of cashing in their stock and nearly doubling their concessionary investment, were the unions encouraging their members to sell their stock? What did the union do, if anything, in a financial advisory role at the time?
I'm not being accusatory, or assuming people should have known at the time that the stock price would tank from there, but I was just curious as to how much advice was given at the time.
I guess in my view, NWA did honor their committment on the stock deal. The IAM had the best of both worlds, a preferred stock (unsecured loan) that was convertible to common stock. Obviously, NWA couldn't make good on that loan when it became due (NWA was not legally allowed to make the payments), and the IAM members got their 12% dividend instead, as the agreement warranted.
I hear a lot of complaining about how all of that played out, but it seems to me that all people involved had every opportunity to cash in long before it became due in 2003. I think you can only place the blame for losing out on the original value of that stock squarely on the shoulder of the individual who held that stock until the end. It appears the union made two mistakes. One was passing on the special conversion option in 1994, which would have turned every preferred share into 1.91 common shares (rather than the original 1.36 conversion). The other was not encouraging their members through reminders, or some other avenue, that while the stock was trading higher than their break-even value, they should consider cashing in.