Tri-Continental Shareholders’ Meeting Vote Results
Tri-Continental Corporation (TY) issued a press release last Friday announcing the preliminary results of the shareholders vote. The bad news is that the directors nominated by Western Investment did not win the vote. However, the current directors also failed to receive a majority of the vote. Therefore, these directors will be up for a vote again next year. It will be interesting to see what the final vote turns out to be and whether or not Seligman, the current fund manager, will take action to address shareholder concerns raised during this shareholders’ meeting.
I decided to place a stop order on the share I own in order to preserve my gains. As you can see from April 22nd post, I originally purchase my shares for $17.40. Today, Tri-Continental closed at $20.63, which is an 18 percent gain on my original investment. If management takes any steps to reduce the discount to NAV, I may be able to even squeeze out a few more percentage points.
I’ve owned TY for 40+ years and back then it really did great things. Over the years my shares self-accumulated very nicely indeed but for the last few years TY has been fast asleep. Some years back, TY stockholders were given “Rights”, ( I called them “wrongs!) which gave the stockholder the opportunity to acquire one right for each ten shares of stock he held , each right giving him the option to sell it or exchange it for stock, (but he was not warned that ignoring that offer would reduce the value of his shares by 10 percent!) Now that was very sneaky! I knew people who got “taken”! Since that time, I have been very leery of TY management. (Which gets paid very well for doing a very poor job.) So I feel I must watch TY and its management like a hawk!
Yo Man! You ARE quick! Seems I just wrote that letter yesterday, not two weeks ago!! And here I am today, idly thumbing through Google and stumbled upon my very own letter! As for my TY stock, I know what to think! I shall wait another few weeks before doing it!