Biographies
- Eric Reguly
Like watching a car crash, in slow motion
I have entered the Italian driver's licence netherworld. I don't know how I will emerge, or what condition I will be in when I do. If I do.
I was told by my expat friends in Rome that getting an Italian driver's licence is akin to unravelling a Gordian Knot. Everyone has a different story, ranging from the amusing to the horrific. Everyone tries to game the system. I know people who have lived here for a decade or more who have found, or claimed to have found, devious ways to get around the rule that residents, whether foreign or Italian, must have Italian licences.
Being the all-Canadian boy scout, I would play it straight.
My first idea was to swap my Canadian licence for an Italian one. I went to the local driving school – “Scuola Guida” – a storefront that does more than just fling you into a Fiat and nudge you into murderous traffic while your instructor smokes and prays. It also arranges the paperwork for car, motorcycle and boating licences. It has a classroom where driving “theory” is taught. The place is cluttered with car posters and engines, their innards exposed. In Italy, you are expected to have a basic knowledge of how a car moves forward and how to change a tire. Good idea, actually.
I handed Pietro (the name has been changed to protect the guilty) my Ontario driver's licence. Nice try, he said. Canada has provincial licences. You can't trade a lowly provincial licence – mutton dressed as sheep, apparently – for a national licence.
That left me with two options: The full driving course or attempting to swap my entirely valid, empire pink, U.K. licence for an Italian one. The former filled me with dread. I would have to attend night theory classes. I would have to write exams and take driving lessons.
My mother, who was born in Italy, went through this in Rome some 35 years ago. I am not making this up: She got yelled at when she had the audacity to stop at a red light when no other cars were around. The whole process would take a couple of months and drain €500 from my pocket. Plus I would probably fail the test. My friends say foreigners routinely flunk first time around. I opted for the U.K. licence swap.
Pietro said the U.K. swap should work and told me I needed three photos and a medical certificate. No problem, I said; I needed to see my doctor anyway. No, said Pietro, you have to use our doctor. Come back on Tuesday night.
That was last night. After filling out several forms, and watching Pietro stamp this and that for about 15 minutes, I was ushered in to see the “doctor,” who looked suspiciously like a driving instructor. He asked how I was feeling. Fine, I said. He checked off a bunch of boxes on the medical form. That was it. Next came the eye test. He told me to remove my glasses and read the chart. I couldn't make out anything but the biggest letter. Well you can't drive, he said. But I wear glasses, I explained. So try with your glasses, he replied. That worked a charm. He urged me never to drive without my glasses. I told him that wouldn't be a problem.
Home free? Not quite. More paperwork was to come. I gave Pietro my U.K. licence. He looked like he was handed a dead fish. The licence says I was born in Canada. The Italian application form demands the city or town of birth as well as the country. Vancouver is where I was born, I said. But Vancouver doesn't appear on the U.K. licence, he said; you have to send it back and tell the Brits to stamp “Vancouver” on it. I said all U.K. licences are the same – none shows the city of birth, just the country. The omission baffled him. He would send off the forms but could not guarantee they would pass muster at the big office.
You have to realize that none of this was confrontational. Losing your temper with Italian bureaucracy is futile at best, fatal at worst. I in fact was quite enjoying the cultural experience and the thrill of not knowing when I would hit the next regulatory tripwire. Pietro seemed amused too. He wanted to practice his English.
At that point I realized he liked me. When I paid the hefty €140 fee, he handed me back a few euros. That wasn't the change. He just felt like giving me a break on the price. There was no receipt, of course. I should find out within a couple of weeks whether the swap works. I am trying to psych myself up for driving school. I am terrified.
Africa's food shortage knows no bounds
The United Nations' food agencies in Rome are now openly warning that food shortages threaten famine in the poorest African countries, among them Burkina Faso, Niger and Senegal. But what about the wealthier African countries? Is all well there?
For an answer, I asked my friend Yussuf Kajenje, a former journalist and father of three who lives in Tanzania, where he now works for one of the international food-development agencies. "Tanzania" and "food crisis" are rarely mentioned in the same sentence; the country is thought to have sufficient production and distribution capability to keep its population fed. Mr. Yussuf's suggests this analysis may be wrong. Tanzania is already suffering, he says.
This is a letter he recently sent to me, presented here with only minor editing changes. Note his second paragraph, which mentions farmers too financially stretched to plant extra crops in spite of the higher prices their products can fetch, and, farther down, the looming biofuels disaster:
"The uncontrollable increase in food prices is becoming a serious problem in Tanzania. I say so because in most cases I do buy food to feed my family and it is a fact that there has been a constant increase in food prices in Tanzania. Maize, rice and beans, which are staple foods here, have doubled in less than three years.
“There are number of reasons leading to the rising food prices. One is that poor farmers in Tanzania are no longer planting more food crops as was the case in the past because they have no money left for inputs which are also becoming too expensive.
“Unfavorable weather conditions in recent years have led to the decline in food production. For instance, last year in Tanzania we faced drought. With scarce rainfall, food production declined a large percentage. Consequently, this has a negative impact on the country's poverty alleviation efforts.
“Another reason is the spill-over effects of the increased world fuel prices. This is attributed to the fact that in some regions of the country there is plenty of food harvested, yet the food cannot be transported to the other regions facing the scarcity because it is too expensive to meet such transportation costs.
“Authorities say up to 300,000 tonnes of maize imports are currently required to meet the national food requirements. Maize is a staple food in Tanzania. Prof. Peter Msolla, the Minister for Agriculture, Food Security and Co-operatives, a few days ago was quoted saying that so far only 6,500 tonnes of maize have been imported despite the government's waiver on taxes on imported foodstuff as an incentive for importers.
“The waiver was aimed at stocking up the national food reserve. In January, the government announced the tax waiver for a period of five months from January to May. This was arrived at following an analysis by the Ministry of Agriculture of the declining food production, with maize production for the 2007/2008 season, coupled with severe food crises in 21 districts of Tanzania.
“Maize importers however said that even after the duty waiver, they were unable to get substantial volumes and attributed this to the fact that most countries that produce grains in large quantities had turned to the lucrative bio-fuel production instead.
“Already, the country has started relief food programs in areas experiencing critical food deficits. Overall inflation also jumped to 8.9 per cent in February this year, up from 6.8 last December. This has serious impact especially among poor households. Currently the food basket in Tanzania accounts for 55 per cent of the consumer price index, meaning most of the inflation burden results from high food and commodity prices.
“Another reason that could lead to the increased prices of food is the current drive to switch from the production of food crops for the production of bio-fuels. Such a trend has some negative impact in the future country's food production as private foreign investors are being given thousands of acres of fertile land to grow plants like sugar cane and jatropha for production of bio fuels."
Italy's plucky little chef: An Olympic icon
The Beijing Olympics are four months away and Italy needs a sports hero. With live ones in short supply, the Italians have decided a dead one in the tiny form of Dorando Pietri, the 5-foot-3 pastry cook who simultaneously won and lost the marathon at the 1908 London Olympics, will do nicely. Next month, a century after his famous race, a statue of Mr. Pietri is to be unveiled in Modena, his home town in northern Italy. He will be celebrated in books, festivals and on stamps too.
A news photo shows Mr. Pietri crossing the tape in first place. He is in obvious pain. He is upright but leaning back, as if about to topple. Two men, to his immediate left and right, urge him on. One is Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes writer who covered the games for London's Daily Mail newspaper. The crowd went wild, but Mr. Pietri was not declared the winner. How did that happen?
Mr. Pietri was unknown outside of Italy when he went to London to compete. The favourites for marathon victory were Johnny Hayes, an American who was not liked by British sports fans, Tom Longboat, the Canadian who had won the 1907 Boston marathon (more on him shortly) and Charles Hefferon, a South African.
Mr. Hefferon set the pace and was out front for most of the race. But he flagged about a mile from the finish and was passed not by the American or the Canadian, but by the little Italian with a mustache. No one knew who he was, but within seconds he had captured the hearts of thousands. Mr. Pietri entered the arena clearly exhausted, dehydrated and confused. He went the wrong way on the track and had to be turned around. Within a few hundred yards of the finish line he staggered and fell. A doctor lifted him to his feet. He collapsed four more times. There were moments when the crowd thought he had died. Then pandemonium broke out. Mr. Hayes had entered the stadium and would win unless Mr. Pietri could run, walk or drag himself to the finish. Instead he was more or less pushed across by sympathetic race officials. Mr. Hayes finished seconds later.
The New York Times declared the finish the “most thrilling athletic event that has occurred since that Marathon race in ancient Greece, where the victor fell at the goal and, with a wave of triumph, died.”
The American team protested, arguing Mr. Pietri's victory had been assisted. The judges agreed and the Italian was disqualified. But recognizing a crowd pleasing opportunity when she saw one, Queen Alexandra personally awarded Mr. Pietri a gilded silver cup. An instant celebrity, Irving Berlin wrote a song in his honour.
The London marathon was the peak of his running career. After the Olympics he turned professional and managed to beat Mr. Hayes twice. But he couldn't beat Mr. Longboat, the Canadian who was called “the Indian” by the press because he was from the Six Nations reserve near Brantford, Ont. Mr. Longboat beat him twice, the fist time in a one-on-one race in Madison Square Garden. Not long after, Mr. Pietri retired from competitive running.
Mr. Pietri's statue, to be unveiled in Modena, does not capture the essence of the beautiful loser, in my opinion. It is 8-feet tall and shows him running gallantly and powerfully, his chest bare. But Mr. Pietri was hardly the embodiment of the ideal Greek Olympian. He was plucky little chef who staggered as much as he galloped. A statue that showed his agony and determination would have been more appropriate.
The least bad candidate
For a crash course in how Italian democracy works, or does not work, go to a polling station. I did this morning and it made my head spin like a radar dish (I am a dual citizen and can vote in Italian elections; today is election day and this is the first time I have voted).
Confusion does not even begin to describe my experience. My local polling station was in a school. The walls of the main hallway were almost entirely covered with vast lists of candidates and their parties. There were separate lists for the Chamber of Deputies (the Parliament's lower house); the Senate (the upper house); the province; the "comune" (the city of Rome, in this case); and the "municipio," the separate regions of the city (the equivalent of councillors, I imagine).
Each level of government had a bewildering array of parties from which to choose. The number ranged from a mere 14 parties for the Senate to 24 for the city of Rome. In total, I had to choose among 94 parties for my five separate votes. To make things even more bewildering, you vote for lists of candidates, not individuals, which in itself makes a mockery of the democratic process. I suffered brain cramps when I realized that some candidates appear on more than one list in different constituencies. Even the ballot itself is not uniform. On three of my five ballots, I simply had to mark an "X" over the party I favoured. On the other two, I had to write my choice of candidate next to the party.
Some of the parties, like Walter Veltroni's centre-left Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) and Silivio Berlusconi's centre-right Popolo della Liberta (People of Freedom), are well known. Others I had never heard of. It was news to me that Antonio Di Pietro, Italy's best-known anti-corruption magistrate, has his own Italy of Values party.
There was a single issue party called Aborto, No Grazie -- Abortion, No Thanks. Another was the National Movement of the Dolphin, which made me laugh. Then I realized that the Italians probably laugh when they see the elephant and the donkey used by the main American parties. There were endless left-wing and communist parties, and a couple of regional sovereignty parties, like Southern Autonomy.
Finally, there was a party that wasn't a party at all. It was the Lista Grillo -- Grillo's List. Grillo is Beppe Grillo, Italy's hugely popular comedian and political commentator whose blog is one of the most popular on the planet. He calls Mr. Berlusconi, who has been prime minister two times already, the "psychotic dwarf" or "asphalt head." He delights in printing the names of parliamentarians who are convicted felons or under criminal investigation. In a recent blog entry, Mr. Grillo said that all the average citizen can do in this election "is make the sign of the cross" because Parliament is about to receive "a a bunch of lovers, wives, sentenced criminals, statute barred offenders, people under investigation and others remanded for trial."
Mr. Grillo himself has vowed never to be a candiate. Yet the few candidates he likes are allowed to use his "Lista Grillo" symbol as an endorsement.
Who got my vote? For the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, I went for Mr. Veltroni's Democratic Party. It was a strategic vote, designed (probably in vain) to keep frontrunner Mr. Berlusconi from winning another term. For my other three votes, I went with the Grillo's recommendations. At least that way I can be reasonably assured the candidates are not felons. In Italy, you vote for the least bad candidate.
Genome Canada comes to Rome
They looked like tourists and marvelled at the sight of Rome at night. But this wasn't about sightseeing. The 45 Canadian men and women, and a similar number of Italians, were all leading scientists with a background in genomics and proteomics. They had gathered for dinner at the Terazza Caffarelli, an elegant terrace on Campidoglio hill in the ancient heart of the city, to get to know one another before the real work begins.
The dinner took place last night and the scientists were guests of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and the Canadian embassy in Rome. The CNR and Genome Canada, the independent agency which funds genomics and proteomics research in Canada, recently signed an agreement to expand their links and establish a broad framework for research into human health. Since Genomics Canada was founded eight years ago, similar agreements have been signed with other European countries, with varying degrees of success. The one with Italy looks promising because the Italians and the Canadians are leaders in this field and neither country seems threatened by the other. In other works, there probably will be few impediments to sharing ideas and research. "These things need a spirit of openness to work well," said Martin Godbout, the CEO of Genome Canada, who was one of last night's guests.
He said the Italian-Canadian genomics partnership was off to a good start. The Canadians had already committed about $10-million to the partnership; the Italians about 10-million euros. The combined figure could easily double. Genome Canada has had considerable success in raising money. About 40 per cent of its budget comes from the Canadian government. The rest comes from the provinces, private donors and foreign sources. The funding to date exceeds $1.6-billion, giving Genome Canada a lot of research firepower and international credibility.
Today the Italian and Canadian scientists are locked in workshop sessions. The goal is to determine where the two sides can work together and how much the collaborative projects, if pursued, would cost. Among the Canadian scientists giving presentations were Robert Roberts and David Castle of the University of Ottawa; Bruce McManus of UBC; John Bergeron of McGill; Andrew Paterson and Michael Moran of Toronto's Sick Kids; and Robert Holt of Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre.
The scientists weren't giving a lot of clues last night about the areas where they might work together, though the possibilities would almost certainly include vaccines, infectious diseases and organ rejection.
Research funded by Genome Canada is starting to produce results. For example, a team financed largely by Genome Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research recently found the gene that causes a deadly disorder known as ARVC5 -- arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy Type 5 -- believed to cause as many as 350,000 cardiac deaths each year in North America. The victims collapse and die without any warning that something is wrong. The gene's discovery will allow high-risk individual to use defbrillators to detect arrhythmia (irregular heatbeat) and return the heartbeat to normal with small electrical shocks.
The gathering of the Italian and Canadian scientists marks a victory for the Canadian embassy in Rome. Promoting trade and investment between the two countries is a worthy, though increasingly frustrating, goal. There are only so many widgets that Italy wants from Canada and vice versa. The sharing of knowledge and research is much more promising way of bringing the two countries closer together. It will also help to save lives.
Italy's 'Mad Buffalo' cheese disease
Italy has its own version of Mad Cow disease. It hasn't got a name yet, but you could call it Mad Buffalo disease. Buffalo milk, not cow's milk, is used to make Italy's finest mozzarella, the rubbery, and expensive, porcelain-white cheese used in pizza and lasagna. Some of the buffalo milk is contaminated with dioxin and sales of mozzarella are down between 30 and 50 per cent. Japan and South Korea this week banned mozzarella imports.
No one I know is buying buffalo mozzarella, most of which comes from the Campania region around garbage-clogged Naples. The Italians are furious. Not only is mozzarella a dietary staple, it is a symbol of Italy's glorious food culture. Shame on mozzarella translates into shame on Italy.
The Italians blame the Neapolitan Mafia, known as the Camorra, for the mozzarella crisis. They are probably right. The run-off from the Camorra's illegal toxic dumps in Campania has no doubt contaminated the land and the water in some parts of the region. Dioxins are a known carcinogenic (though there are many types of dioxin, ranging from the relatively benign to the outright deadly). Dozens of buffalo herds have been quarantined because of higher-than-normal dioxin levels have been found in the animals' milk. Italy has some 250,000 buffalo whose milk is devoted to mozzarella production.
This being Italy, it's extremely hard for consumers to judge the true health risks. Unbiased opinions are rare and spin is rife. The Italian government today essentially told everyone to relax. Agriculture minister Paulo De Castro slammed what he called “the negative campaign that risks having an important economic and social impact on all products from Campania.”
Note that the minister didn't go so far as to say all buffalo mozzarella is safe. Meanwhile the Italian Confederation of Farmers said the mozzarella panic is not justified because the contamination affects only a tiny portion of the mozzarella farms. But the European Commission is erring on the side of caution. On Tuesday it asked for assurances from the Italian health and food authorities that the mozzarella is safe. It wants an answer by tomorrow.
The tragedy of the mozzarella mess is that everyone saw it coming and almost nothing was done about it. It's been an open secret for years that the Camorra hass been dumping thousands of truck loads of toxic waste on farms (some of which they probably own), in rivers and in caves in Campania. Two years ago Italian author Roberto Saviano wrote a book, called “Gomorra,” about the Camorra's stranglehold on the Neapolitan economy. Several chapters were devoted to the toxic waste racket.
Mr. Saviano said the problem began in earnest in the 1990s, when the Camorra cleverly solved northern Italy's shortage of dumps and incinerator capacity by trucking the waste south and stuffing it into already-packed landfills and unlicensed sites. One cavern was found brimming with the equivalent of 28,000 truckloads of trash.
Because the Mob charges close to market rates to pick up the waste but dumps it for next to nothing, the profits are lavish. "We're talking about six billion euros in two years," Mr. Saviano said in an interview by email in February (he lives under police protection because of the mob death threats against him and rarely gives face-to-face interviews). "Farmlands bought at extremely low prices are transformed into illegal dumping grounds. Putting their own men into the local administration, the Camorra enters the waste business at all levels. … The type of garbage dumped includes everything: barrels of paint, printer toner, human skeletons, cloths used for cleaning cow udders, zinc, arsenic and the residue of industrial chemicals."
The authorities finally caught on in 2002, when the first of the "eco-Mafia" trials began. But the problem persists. In a 2006 study of 196 municipalities in the region, the World Health Organization found "significant excesses" — up to 12 per cent higher than the national average — for stomach, liver, kidney, lung and pancreatic cancer. In the town of Acerra, about 20 kilometres northeast of Naples, sheep are dying because of high levels of toxicity found in the land. Many thousands of buffalo have been slaughtered.
In spite of the effort by the mozzarella makers and the government to remove some of the fear factor, the truth is the dioxin contamination could be widespread in Campania, thanks to the toxic dumps. If so the mozzarella crisis will take months, perhaps years, go go away. Fancy pizza with cheddar instead?
Naked News hits Italy
I feel sorry for the cultural attaches at the Canadian embassy in Rome. Try as they might, it's hard to get Italians interested in Canadian culture. As far as the locals are concerned, Canada is little more than an open-air seal slaughterhouse, an exporter of maple syrup and the home country of Neil Young and Avril Lavigne.
Thankfully, Naked News has come to the rescue. Naked News -- "the show that has nothing to hide" -- is a proud Canadian media invention. It has set up outposts around the world since its launch in Toronto in 2000 and, last week, it finally came to Italy. The Italian version hit the web with a interview with Michela Fiore, a 25-year-old who said she was looking forward to her new career as a news reader who takes all her clothes off. "I find it a very interesting job which will undoubtedly contribute to my professional career," she said.
Naked News Italia has a target of 50,000 web subscriptions by the end of the year, at euros 9.99 a month. This sounds optimistic, if only because regular Italian TV already brims with nearly naked women, thanks to Silvio Berlusconi's babes-and-sports broadcast formula. Almost every show, from the dullest political blab-a-thon to family game programs, feature scantily clad eye candy. Tough competition indeed for Naked News.
No word from the embassy yet on how it plans to celebrate Canada's newest cultural export.
Dresden's miraculous return
I am in Dresden, en route from visiting a Canadian company, Arise Technologies, that is building a photovoltaic-cell factory nearby. I am in awe. Thirteen square miles of the Saxon city’s core were completely destroyed by British and American bombing raids on Feb. 13 and 14, 1945. While I knew some of the beautiful old city, known as Florence on the Elbe, had been rebuilt, I had no idea how extensive the effort had been. Much of the downtown was put back together like a jig-saw puzzle, brick by brick. Today it is just possible to imagine what Dresden looked like at the peak of its cultural and industrial peak, in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
Dresden’s bombing remains one of the most controversial events of the Second World War. It was an undefended city. The bombing came just two months before the end of the war. While it had numerous factories and acted as a communications centre for the Germans near the front lines of the war, its importance as a military city was certainly open to question. Some 25,000 people were killed in the bombing and subsequent firestorm — the Allies used incendiary bombs. In “Dresden,” author Frederick Taylor did not conclude the bombing was entirely pointless. But it seemed excessive. “Dresden remains a terrible illustration of what apparently civilized human beings are capable of under extreme circumstances, when all the normal brakes on human behaviour have been eroded by years of total war,” he wrote.
Dresden was absorbed into communist East Germany and slowly came back to life. New buildings went up, but many were hideous examples of Soviet architecture. A local journalist I met, Peter Weissenberg, told me it wasn’t until about a decade ago — more than 50 years after the end of the war — that the renovation and reconstruction of the loveliest buildings began in earnest. “It’s incredible what’s happened,” he said.
The most impressive reconstruction is probably that of the Dresdner Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), the enormous Lutheran church at the city’s centre. Using old photographs, computer imaging and the memories of residents, the church was painstakingly pieced back together using original and new stone (the original stone is easy to spot because of its black, fire-damaged patina). New bells were made. Oak doors were recarved and crosses were recast in gold. Money flowed in from around the world to finish the job. The church reopened in 2005. It’s a marvel.
Other buildings were rebuilt too. I saw archeologists excavating the vast ruins of a series of buildings near the church. Old Dresden cannot be entirely recreated, of course. But what has been done so far is impressive.
The city is a tourist and cultural centre once again. It is also a thriving technology centre. New factories produce computer chips and cars. Surrounding towns are dotted with solar- and wind-energy companies. The United Nations declared Dresden a UNESCO World Heritage site a few years ago. The honour is well deserved.
Branson goes coconuts
Richard Branson has alway used stunts and gimmicks masterfully to promote his Virgin Group companies. He will fly across oceans in balloons and slide down ropes dangling from cages suspended way atop public squares (as he did in Toronto to plug his Virgin Mobile phone service). He will even fill the fuel tanks of his Virgin Atlantic planes with coconut oil, as he did the other day, generating headlines around the world.
The coconut escapade qualified more as gimmick than stunt. And a bad gimmick it was too. Branson's idea was to show that it's not impossible for airlines to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. To try to prove his point, he launched the first biofuels-powered commercial flight, from London to Amsterdam. To be absolutely clear, the plane's fuel tanks contained only a small amount of biofuels, in this case a mix of coconut oil from 150,000 coconuts and a similar oil made from Brazilian babassu nuts. Three of the plane four tanks carried normal aviation fuel (kerosene). The fourth contained 80 per cent kersone and 20 per cent coconut/babassu oil. In other words, only 5 per cent of the fuel was biofuel. Calling this a biofuels-powered flight is a stretch.
Implying that using biofuels is good for the planet is an even bigger stretch. The ever inventive oil research team in London at Barclays Capital (analyst Paul Horsnell et al) duly performed its cococut calculation. If all the plane's tanks were filled with biofuel, it would require slaughtering some 3-million coconuts. London's Heathrow airport has 1,300 flights a day. If all the flights used biofuels, they would consume the oil from 3-billion coconuts (plus an indeterminate amount of babassu oil). Sri Lanka is one of the world's biggest coconut growers. As it turns out, the country's total annual coconut production is slightly less than 3-billion coconuts. The coconut output from an entire tropical company would be required to keep Heathrow in action for a single day. The total global production of coconuts would keep Heathrow going for 18 days.
If coconut oil were to become the fuel of choice of airlines, entire continents would have to devoted to coconut production. The Barclays' team concluded that Branson's gimmick seems to have backfired. Instead of proving that biofuels could help fuel flights, it has in effect proved the opposite. But Branson doesn't seem to care. He got his headlines and now a few deluded travellers think Virgin Atlantic is a green airline.
What credit crunch?
So much for the credit crunch. Earlier today the private-equity firm Hellman & Friedman raised enough debt to pay a higher-than-expected price for Getty Images, the world's biggest distributor of stock images from the National Geographic photo library and many other famous collections. The $34 (U.S.) a share price is a 55 per cent premium to Getty's close on Jan. 18, the day before the company announced it was for sale. Including debt, Hellman is paying $2.4-billion for the business.
Getty's sale wasn't supposed to be this fast or this easy. A month ago, the markets were sinking faster than a cement lifejacket, credit was hard to come by (still is) and economists everywhere were predicting a recession (still are, if only in the United States). The betting was that finding a buyer for Getty would range from the difficult to the impossible; the sagging share price said as much.
But Hellman nonetheless convinced Barclays Capital, General Electric and RBS Greenwich Capital to stump up the funds, suggesting the private-equity market is still alive. Deals at the lower end of the price spectrum -- south of US$3-billion or so -- are still getting done. The trio of lenders probably took some comfort in the fact that Mark Getty, the company's co-founder, chairman and one of the heirs to the old Getty oil fortune, will role his shares into the new entity.
The bad news is that Getty was worth far more a year ago, before a profit warning, restated earnings and fear of competition from low-cost rivals took their toll. Still, Mark Getty and his partner, Jonathan Klein, can take some pride in getting a premium in an exceedingly difficult market. He and Mark are wealthy, ambitious and still in their 40s. Watch them pop up with a new business soon.
Reporter Eric Reguly on business in Europe and the United Kingdom.
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