[AT] kill a tractor company and get a pardon

[James Peck]

Conrad Black left Massey Ferguson before the 82  83 recession really got going.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Black

[ James Peck] I once had a co-worker whose father had retired from the Massey Ferguson Detroit location when it closed. Ferguson Park appears solely to have been a name made up by Harry. I worked for awhile within sight of the still standing facility. I saw something once saying that the hourly employee incomes at Massey Ferguson Detroit made it one of the more expensive motor vehicle manufacturers of the US. MF Brantford may have been not much different.

Black’s conviction was in the US.  It appears it was MF’s US operations that brought Black under US criminal jurisdiction.

[ James Peck] VW once offered to buy MF? New information.

IH got bought by Case in the same recession. I was working on the floor at Caterpillar Lafayette and was passed the news by a Cat employee.

[Stephen Offiler] Current politics aside, here is a direct cut-n-paste out of Wikipedia on the Conrad Black/MF relationship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massey_Ferguson

Conrad Black take-over:
On 16 August 1978, Conrad Black, whose family had obtained control of an investor of Massey Ferguson's, Argus Corporation, became active in Massey Ferguson's management.[20] The previous year, chairman Albert A. Thornbrough received a $471,000 salary, the highest executive salary in Canada at the time.[21] During the 50 years between 1929 and 1979, the firm made more than 4% on its sales only five times. Under Black's leadership, Massey Ferguson instituted significant cost-cutting programmes that returned it to profitability. During the late 1970s, production was relocated to a new large facility in Brantford, Ontario. In 1978 Massey Ferguson was the first to introduce an electronic control system for the three-point hitch on a tractor.[citation needed] However, a worldwide decline in the agricultural equipment market combined with high inflation, high domestic interest rates and a major recession, caused Massey Ferguson to slip into a loss once again. On 31 October 1979, VW AG made an informal offer for 51% of the firm, but was rebuffed by Black.[22] On 23 May 1980, Black resigned as chairman. In a subsequent series of detailed and lengthy letters to Herb Gray, then the Canadian Minister of Industry under the government of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, he remarked on the challenges faced by the firm, and outlined his solution, which would have seen the Canadian and Ontario governments as well as Argus Corporation refloat the ailing firm. Black failed to obtain a suitable response, and resolved to cut his losses.[23]
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