said by elwoodblues:said by Ott_Cable :Why would a publicly traded company need to be secretive about its ownership and control structure?
Because they aren't supposed to own it?
It's off the books, hidden in some obscure US holding company, which is the mistake they made, they bought too much.
Without knowing any details, ... IF the alleged rumour about Bell owning some of Telus either directly, via an affiliated company(ies), or perhaps even via the Bell pension fund totals more than some number, it might be that Bell could be afoul of securities laws - in effect conducting an undisclosed takeover. Again this is hypothetical.
Hypothetically, I wonder what the remedy to that would be since they'd be prohibited from actually taking Telus over.......... maybe they'd have to pay each Telus shareholder a premium (in cash) but not actually take ownership of their shares, and then Bell might be forced to sell their own stake in Telus. In other words, billions out the door for ownership of absolutely nothing.
But all this is hypothetical as there is no clear understanding of exactly what Bell's (subsidiaries & affiiliates included) position vis-a-vis Telus actually is.