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Wednesday, May 28, 2008 4:43 PM

Shaw keep 'em guessing at wireless auction

Andrew Willis

One goal in any poker game is to keep opponents guessing at your hand, and that's just what Jim Shaw is doing in the first round of the wireless auction.

Shaw Communications' CEO has the rest of the table scratching their heads as they weigh his $176-million initial wager on Tuesday, as its defies expectations that Mr. Shaw would simply buy space in order to flip it.

As a month-long auction begins, Shaw Communications is showing interest in wireless spectrum that overlaps his company's western Canadian cable customer base, along with licenses in Montreal and Toronto. In a research report Wednesday, RBC Dominion Securities said: “The size and breadth of Shaw's bidding shows that the company is definitely serious about wireless, counter to past comments from management.”

RBC Dominion used the metaphor of a high-stakes poker game to explain where this auction will go from here. “Some bidders may start small, while others will place big bids to maintain eligibility points between rounds,” the investment bank explained. “Consequently, [we] caution investors from drawing too many concrete conclusions from the bid results in the early rounds. Over the coming weeks (the auction will likely run ~30 days) bidders may begin withdrawing and true bid patterns will be revealed.”

“The key question is whether any of the new entrants can successfully acquire a national license area,” concluded the investment dealer.

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Andrew Willis

Andrew Willis joined The Globe and Mail in September of 1995. His career has included stints at a number of publications, including The Financial Post, The Financial Times of Canada, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, and MacLean's magazine. He also did freelance writing for Investment Executive magazine. He appears on television for BNN TV and CBC Newsworld.

Andrew has co-written a book, The Bre-X Fraud, with business journalist Douglas Goold.

Read Streetwise Tuesday through Friday in the pages of Report on Business.

 
Boyd Erman

Boyd Erman

Boyd Erman is a long-time business journalist who has worked at Dow Jones, Bloomberg, and the National Post before joining the Globe and Mail. Over the years, his areas of coverage have included economics, monetary policy, debt markets and corporate finance.

In addition, he is a regular commentator and guest host on Business News Network.

 

Steve Ladurantaye

Steve Ladurantaye wrote about technology companies in Ottawa before reporting for the Peterborough Examiner and Kingston Whig-Standard, where he won a National Newspaper Award for explanatory journalism. After joining the Globe and Mail in 2007, his work has regularly appeared in Report On Business and Globe Investor Magazine.

 
Globe and Mail reporter Tara Perkins

Tara Perkins

Tara Perkins has been a business reporter since 2004, following a brief stint as overnight editor of globeandmail.com. She has been writing for the Globe's business section since the spring of 2007, covering the banking sector during the course of the financial crisis. Prior to that, she worked for the Toronto Star. Tara has a Bachelor of Journalism from Ryerson University and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Guelph.

 
 

Jacquie McNish

Jacquie McNish has been a business writer with The Globe and Mail since 1988. Prior to that she was a reporter with The Wall Street Journal.

During her time at The Globe and Mail, she has served as the paper's New York correspondent and won three National Newspaper Awards. She is the author of The Big Score: Robert Friedland and The Voisey's Bay Hustle and Wrong Way: The Fall of Conrad Black, for which she and co-author Sinclair Stewart won the National Business Book Award. She is a co-host of Market Morning on the Business News Network.