Dear Pat: My question has to do with buying conglomerates or holding companies versus buying the individual stocks in them. In some of your comments you recommend holding the conglomerate but most of your comments seem to recommend the individual stocks (i.e. Power Corp./Investors Group and Great-West Life, and more recently Weston/Loblaw). Can you give some guidelines that would help in choosing what is appropriate for who and when?
You need to look at each conglomerate on a case-by-case basis. Here are some examples:
Power Financial holds majority interests in Great-West Lifeco and Investors Group. We see both Great-West and Investors Group as buys. However, Power Financial also has a large stake in Pargesa Holding S.A. of Europe. Pargesa, in turn, has large interests in a group of major European media, energy, utilities and specialty minerals companies. We don’t have the same confidence in these holdings as we do in Great-West Lifeco and Investors Group. So we think investors should stick with Great-West and Investors Group — the highest-quality segments of Power Financial’s holdings.
We don’t recommend Power Financial.
On the other hand, Power Corporation holds a number of interests outside of Power Financial, including investments in Asia. For Power Corp., this reduces the risk of Power Financial’s holdings in Pargesa.
We see Power Corp. as a buy.
Similarly, we like both Loblaw and George Weston. In addition to its 62% stake…
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