Strine, who concluded the three-day trial after Black finished his testimony late Friday, has said he will rule in the case by next Friday.
A critical document in the case is the memorandum that Black signed in November, in which he promised to support a sale of assets by the board and not to sell his own stake -- held by a separate company called Hollinger Inc -- unless the holding company was on the brink of "material default or insolvency."
Earlier Friday, Peter White, the co-chief executive officer of Hollinger Inc, testified that the holding company was indeed nearing insolvency. If that were the case, Black might be found to have the right to sell his controlling stake to the Barclays.
But upon cross-examination, White acknowledged that the holding company's most pressing financial obligation, a US$7 million interest payment due March 1, could essentially be met by asking Black and his associates to repay personal loans made by the company. Moreover, White confirmed that the parent company's assets were vast, including more than US$400 million worth of stock in Hollinger.
Black has also asked the court to effectively negate the November agreement in its entirety, because, he testified Friday, the independent board members had misled him into signing it. In the agreement, he acknowledged he had received payments of about US$7 million in recent years, ostensibly tied to noncompete agreements, that were either unauthorized or insufficiently disclosed.
But Black maintained on Friday that he had not been given sufficient time in November to review all relevant documents before signing the agreement. Indeed, he said his lawyers had recently unearthed documents suggesting that some of those payments had been authorized by at least some board members.
Those documents, he said, had created sufficient doubt in his mind that he began to question his "moral or legal" obligation to keep the promise that he would repay that money.
RSS