Why West Fraser Should Buy Mercer International
West Fraser Timber Co., the world’s largest lumber producer, has spent much of the past decade diversifying beyond sawmills, expanding into engineered wood products and pulp manufacturing while riding the…
A Shareholder Letter to Smurfit WestRock
Unlock the Sleeping Giant — Break Up the Business Now To the Board and Management of Smurfit WestRock Smurfit WestRock is, without exaggeration, the single most undervalued major industrial company…
Smurfit WestRock’s Bold Price Play Puts Pressure on Rivals, Wins Share in Premium Board
Smurfit WestRock PLC’s third-quarter earnings may have missed Wall Street forecasts, but behind the softer numbers lies a calculated, aggressive play that could redefine the global packaging industry’s competitive landscape.…
Unboxing the China Trade
The containerboard boom with China changed American manufacturing. Its reversal may change it again. For most Americans, the economic relationship between the United States and China did not begin with…
Kimberly-Clark’s Perilous Courtship With Tylenol’s Legal Fallout
There are moments in corporate history when a board, entrusted with the stewardship of a venerable institution, appears determined to test the tensile strength of shareholder patience. Kimberly-Clark’s eagerness to…
Kimberly-Clark Is Volunteering for a Government-Backed Firing Squad — And Calling It a “Generational Opportunity”
Every decade or so, a corporate board puts its hand on a hot stove, gets burned, and the rest of us get a good reminder of why oven mitts were…
How China Accidentally Built America’s Most Disruptive Boxmaker
The U.S. went from shipping boxes to China… to shipping them to Pratt. For most of the late 20th century, the U.S. paper and packaging industry resembled an old, well-run…
The Icahn-Style Broadside: Time to Finish What the Smurfit–WestRock Merger Started
Let’s stop dancing around it and say what everyone in the market is thinking: the Smurfit–WestRock merger wasn’t the problem. In fact, it was a smart, strategic move. It eliminated…
Smurfit WestRock: A Bloated Giant That Can Double Its Stock If It Stops Acting Like a Jobs Program
Every industry has one company that everyone whispers about but no one calls out directly. In packaging, that company is Smurfit WestRock — a bloated, sluggish, overbuilt behemoth that has…
Bitcoin’s Invisible Hand: How Crypto Is Siphoning Risk Capital, Dampening Inflation, and Keeping the Dollar Too Strong
A New Type of Economic Gravity Every financial era has its invisible force. In the 1980s, it was deregulation; in the 1990s, globalization; in the 2010s, quantitative easing. Today, that…