I asked this question of you specifically because as you know we disagree on the
logistics of Balsillie moving a team to the area. However, with respect to
Hamilton, we may disagree somewhat on the details and whether the city might
in theory have enough support for a team, but we certainly agree on the big picture. Much of what is happening right now leaves me puzzled. I find it very hard to imagine that Balsillie would risk the territorial fees or the battle to challenge them to insist on Hamilton and then have to turn around and invest $100 million plus on someone else's building. Now he is raising the stakes even more by his recent actions
which certainly put even the purchase of the Preds in a more precarious position.
Individual parts of the deal can easily be explained. But it seems clear to me
that he has something specific in mind for how this will all play out
I stated in a previous post and agree with Resolute that the best situation for all could be for a strong local ownership group to surface in Nashville a la Edmonton's EIG and for Balsillie to be awarded an expansion franchise which he could manage
more or less on his own conditions and time table though outside the territory of Buffalo and perhaps Toronto. More and more, I can't help but think that
Balsillie has been intent on pushing the NHL towards rejecting his purchase in favour of an expansion team.
To be frank, Fourier, I do find it kind of interesting that people think that all that has happened is unfolding according to some crafty, devious master plan that has previously scripted out everything that has happened to date.
For many of the reasons you have stated, but which some of the schlubs on this board have ignored, I actually think that Balsillie's original "game plan" went way out the window some time ago. I actually think that what we are witnessng is a complete cluster**** on the part of Balsillie and his counsel. It is completely botched, and Balsillie is going about it in a completely hamhanded way.
There are completely different negotiating tactics that one undertakes in doing a deal where you are simply buying something, versus the tactic one employs when one is buying into a partnership/Joint venture. In the latter, one does not employ tactics which are
certain to antagonize and/or humiliate. Yet, this Balsillie has done.
There is a bit of a misconception about Balsillie being some kind of business wunderkind. For the most part, he is a guy who had the good fortune to be a buddy of Mike Lazardis, who developed a killer product that has caught on like a mofo. Balsillie does not have a huge background of successfully engineering acquisitions of this magnitude, to my knowledge. He is in new territory. The biggest negotiation that he DID engineer was the negotiation of the resolution of the lawsuit against RIM by a US patent troll. He messed up that negotiaiton and cost RIM hundreds of additional millions of dollars, quite frankly. RIM is a one-excellent-trick pony which hopes like hell that no one builds a better mousetrap than theirs.
For this reason, I would suggest that it is pretty well laughable to me that Balsillie is executing a detailed, previously thought-out strategy. There are too many variables involving too many parties whose reactions could not be foreseen.
One additional thing that I find extremely curious, by the way, (and probably only lawyers would find it curious) is the choice of law firm that Balsillie has employed for this series of transactions. RIM's longtime counsel is McCarthy Tetrault, a Canadian megafirm which is one of the "seven sisters" of Canadian law (the seven universally acknowledged premier firms, by far). However, instead he has (for his various Hamilton forays) used Gardiner Roberts. Gardiner Roberts, while a fine firm, is at best a third or fourth tier firm. Their key strength is in health law. For a multi-disciplinary transaction like this one involving corporate, contract, leasing, real estate, secured lending, competition, and (probably) litigation components AND involves cross-border considerations which would entail the management of US counsel, this begs for the services of a giant firm with expertise and bench strength in all those disciplines. A firm like McCarthys, for example. I believe it may be that McCarthys represents the city of Hamilton from time to time, which would create a conflict, but there are about a dozen firms that one would call up that would blow a minor firm like Gardiner Roberts out of the water. Gardiner is not even on the radar in this arena, to be honest. Also, as a key client, Balsillie would probably trump Hamilton as a client if asked to choose. Keep in mind that I am not blaming Balsillie's counsel for the above referenced hamfisted approach per se. Strategy is a result of counsel and client together. The outside lawyers do not decide. I am just saying that to suggest that this is not an audible probably places WAY too much credit with Balsillie and his counsel.
