Grace’s “Post-Asbestos Bankruptcy Play”
admin | Jul 15, 2009 | Comments 2
by Paul Peters
On July 13, Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC’s Mad Money, advised investors to start buying stock in W.R. Grace & Co. He did this, he says, after he “went back to do more homework” on the business, on the advice from a viewer’s email.
“So what’s with this amazing Grace?” he asks. “The real story here is that W.R. Grace is a post-asbestos bankruptcy play.”
“W.R. Grace went into bankruptcy not because the business was awful, but because of asbestos lawsuits,” he says.
The company, he says, settled all those claims back in April.
The first thing Cramer leaves out is that Grace settled in April 2008, one year ago, meaning his tip is based off of old news (this information does briefly pop up on a little tag at the bottom of the screen, well after he mentions the date).
He then leaves out all the more recent good news W.R. Grace has received, such as settling with the town of Libby, Montana for what critics believe was way to little, or beating charges that it knowingly poisoned the same town with asbestos.
Finally, he points out how other companies that have emerged from asbestos-related bankruptcy saw a brief surge in stock value, which dropped off because of the companies ties to the housing industry.
“Remember,” Cramer says, “asbestos went into housing… For W.R. Grace, the bad housing news is in the past.”
Grace was, of course, involved in housing and building products, producing Zonolite, which went into tens of millions of U.S. homes, and Monokote, which was sprayed on building across the U.S., including the former World Trade Center buildings. Both of these products were contaminated with Libby asbestos.
Grace was certainly “in housing” and its products are still in a lot of homes and businesses across the country. Cramer, if he did in fact do his homework, may have decided the truth was a little tacky, and is asking his viewers to bet that Zonolite, Monokote, and Libby, Montana have all been put in Grace’s past.
Print Filed Under: Breaking News Blog
Kinda like rewarding the Nazi’s for the gassing/killing of the Jews…What the hells the difference??? Obama and DOJ best get a handle on this before we all end up like the Jews… I am serious…I guess the sickness till death of MILLIONS of people by the same thing by the same people just isn’t important enough to save people the rest of the world.Asbestos doom is here and no one is guilty…This is so crazy…I am serious.
And now they want to put a VA clinic in Libby to expose our Vets to Tremolite asbestos!!! What the hell is wrong with this picture??? Not in Libby…