black wednesday..., page-15

Vishalt to be fair no one saw the crisis coming. There's a fair chance that if it did not occur, the conditions that existed in early '07 would have persisted. That in turn would probably have justified Alcan's price tag.

Another point, don't forget Clifford and Skinner gave basically gave their approval to the Alcan buy. In fact Clifford was also involved in the planning stages of the purchase. The acquisition did not materialise from nothing within months of Albanese taking the CEO's reins, they've been doing the planning for some years prior. So they must share some blame too, if you're inclined to go that route.

However everyone's a genius with the benefit of hindsight. If the sub prime issues only proved to be a transient minor event then I doubt people would still say Alcan was a bad buy. The fact remains however that the severity of the crisis was basically a 'black swan' event, which no one could have reasonably factored into their plans.