It's my daddy's company, and I will sell if I want too

Whilst I do not think I have the share trading audience I probably need to make this an interesting post, I guess I have to start somewhere.

As a lot of you may know, James Packer has gone and sold half of his father's prized media assets. The proceeds from this sale will more than likely be ploughed back in to a ever growing gambling division. So that is the basis of the story, but here is why I think JP is a lot dumber than most people think.

Kerry spent many years building his media empire, which has a crowning jewel of channel Eddie. This gives PBL a public face through which to tell the public what to think. I can guarantee though, that if Kerry still had a heart-beat, channel 9 would not have been sold. People may argue that KP has sold channel 9 before to Alan Bond, which is true. But, that was when "Bondie" paid about 5 times what it was worth, held it for about 18 months and had to sell it back to KP for one-fifth of the original price when he went broke. That deal made KP very wealthy and very famous and showed that he was a very astute investor.

JP on the other hand, seems to want to prove that he is as good as his father. But clearly he is not (read as : OneTel). So he has sold-off, for a fairly average price, a cash-cow tv empire, that whilst not high growth, will produce solid returns year-on-year, in order to purchase into a risky casino operation in Macau. High risk for two main reasons being (a) Everybody wants to get a piece of that action so as a result the cost to buy in is reasonably high and effectively reduces returns on the portfolio. (b) It is not yet proven that people want to go to Macau to gamble, this is just what a few people have convinced the Macau government that might happen.

Now I am not normally the type of person who wants to see big business fail, because it creates havoc. But I think it would be somewhat entertaining if JP was to wipe out KP's legacy within 12 months of leaving the place. If James really wants to invest in casino's, surely Australia's richest man can raise funds a better way than this?

All this gives me another reason to not invest in PBL and maybe take an allotment in T3. At least JP is doing something for his country.