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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E_K_S who wrote (21796)	7/27/2005 9:22:24 PM
From: Paul Senior	Respond to of 78516

E_K_S. Congratulations on HAL! I decided to take Jim Clarke's advice here regarding companies associated with asbestos --- AVOID! (Now Jim doesn't post here anymore, so I don't know if he changed his opinion. Perhaps so. Perhaps not. It seemed at the time many companies were having financial issues with the litigation. For a value investor, the litigation outcomes ($ costs to the company after insurance) couldn't be scoped out, so that the value of the companies could not be ascertained no matter what price they sold for. (Some co.'s did go bankrupt if I recall.) A few of the companies did do very very well though. There was COO (if I recall right), and some smart investors (you!) (or lucky or politically astute(??) people) had a chance with HAL, and there was Buffett's/surrogate's/BRK's investment in that packaging co. which went roughly from 19 to 40 after they settled with plaintiff attorneys (Sorry. memory fails on the name here). Anyway, I am guessing at this point GP's issues regarding asbestos are a non-issue for new investors. I'm not following the specific companies involved in asbestos litigation, but I don't recall seeing any horrendous problems/surprises or bankruptcies lately. So I didn't mention it (as regards GP) because I assume it's a non issue at this time. That'd be my opinion, and I could be very wrong as I have been many, many times. (Sorry I was not a buyer of HAL when it was discussed here.)