[Conrad Black]'s descent into humiliation was a long time coming, and could easily have been resolved at the many stations of the cross he ignored along the way. In April 2003, Standard & Poor's, the authoritative credit ratings agency, slashed Hollinger Inc.'s stock to junk bond status because Black refused to redeem the company's retractable preferred shares, whose unfortunate holders were owed $100 million. "What investors dislike about Hollinger," observed Wall Street's Jefferies & Company, "is the fact that it is a public company being operated by Conrad as his private fiefdom." Black dismissed his critics as beneath contempt, maintaining that his financial survival was assured. "We are not running a Christian Scientists' meeting here, where we all have to sing from the same hymn sheet," he boasted in London's Sunday Times. "Anybody who complains about it can take a hike."
Sources
"A Great Fall" by Peter C. Newman, Toronto Life, Oct. 2007, p. 56
