Graftech, International was recently swallowed in a hostile takeover by one of the biggest bullies in the global sphere -- Brookfield Asset Management Group, sometimes known as Brookfield Renewable -- a group of fat "investors" who also happen to be devoid of ethics... this group gets a kick by throwing around abuses of power.
Brookfield is AKA a few different names, publicly-traded companies trading under the tickers BAM or BEP -- incantations of a sleaze named Richard J Legault.
Brookfield quite literally stole shareholder equity with its most recent hostile takeover of graphene research firm GrafTech. The hostile takeover was not done to further advancements in graphene research, to give an honest ROI to existing shareholders (the author of this blog being one), or to make the world a better place. Any corporate slogans or company statements about business purposes are a sham. Brookfield is a robber, plain and simple.
The takeover of GrafTech was done to steal equity and future ROI from existing owners, essentially removing it and all future benefit from the common good. It was done to halt progress and arrest an industry that cannot thrive when it is being shepherded by Evil.
Brookfield Asset Management and its subsidiaries have a little dance routine that's been been working pretty well for them for some time: the routine siphons value directly from small-er companies and kills them (and in the process kills everyone who has invested in them).
With a mixture of takeover bonuses for the parent company (BAM), executive-only dividends, managed "trusts", REITs paid to those "managers" of BAM and intentionally complex financial instruments that leave existing company shareholders in the red, Brookfield is the bigger, meaner Bernie Madoff at global scale.
Brookfield bears a pyramidal control structure, a design that U.S. regulators have frowned on since the 1930s. Simply stated, this type of structure lets a small group of shareholders exercise control of a business
And even the SEC can't keep up with them: http://sirf-online.org/2013/03/11/disclosure-diligence/
Regulations, as much as hardcore right-wingers hate them, are needed. There is nothing protecting independent investors when their retirement savings are being yanked away from them.
Help with this please. Help write the SEC.
Unfortunately, doing business with Graftech is doing business with Brookfield, and you DO NOT want to do that.
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