About those rumors....

Several weeks ago, USGNN ran a piece on the possible sale of Vistawall to Oldcastle. After I did not mention in my next blog post, I got a spate of e-mails asking me why I hadn’t commented on it. Quite honestly I was hearing so many things, I really wasn’t comfortable coming out and posting my opinion. (Some rumors had different players, so much so that I thought one scenario had Oldcastle trading for Kobe Bryant) But now, with more info clearly flowing, this deal, Oldcastle buying Vistawall looks pretty much done. The only thing holding me back from saying it’s an absolute has been the unprecedented chatter surrounding this deal. Usually in plays this size, the communications are kept silent, but in this one, everyone’s talking so that’s odd. Which could mean it’s a lot of smoke screen. (((UPDATE! 6/20/07 It may actually be a smokescreen as now the hottest rumor is NOT Oldcastle buying Vistawall but another verrrry major player in the industry. Wow, my head is spinning, as soon as I get one more clarification, I'll let you in on who it is. But if it is, who I am hearing, its a stunner))) If and when it (Oldcastle) does, my thoughts on it are… from an Industry commenting standpoint, it’s an interesting deal. It’s another angle of consolidation with one side of the industry creeping onto the other side. Plus the culture issue will surely come into play, as from my view, they are not similar. From a personal standpoint, it’s an endorsement of the business model that Arch has worked for many, many years- being a one stop shop nationwide… or a “Single Source” if you will. I am sure they’ll be honored that Oldcastle is following in their footsteps. So stay tuned, we’ll see if and when the rumor becomes reality.

Elsewhere…

- The Glass Processing Days looked like an interesting event. Not sure if there’s word for word transcripts available for it, but if there was I would love to see everything that was said from the panel featuring among others Russ Ebeid of Guardian. I think those guys covered some hot subjects and had some extremely interesting angles on where we are now and where we are headed glass-wise. No offense to the press that covered it, because the reports were great, but for me I wanted more and maybe that’s coming when the hardcopies of the magazines come out.

- A follow up on a comment left on my post about the Laminated Glass study. To save you the trouble from toggling down, the comment basically agreed with my premise that this study, while headlining such great news, was not that it seemed. However the commenter asked what I thought about the fact that the “field” was really optimistic on growth more so than the reports show. My thought is that I think people see what they want to see, there’s been this urge to get into laminated and many people are either getting into it or expanding against the advice of the people who truly know what’s going on… that would be the interlayer manufacturers. While I don’t see any of the interlayer guys publicly stating that lami sales will be flat going forward, I know for sure that it’s being discussed privately. Yet the surge continues- thus the hiring of groups to pull together “studies” so the purchases/expansions can be justified. Yes time will tell, but with communist China bringing billet laminated into this country, I really don’t see the future as rosy as others. (Then again do I ever?) Thank you to Marc for the comment- I do appreciate it!

- This week’s “Green” moment is actually not one… in our world of trying to go “green” I saw one example of what I would call a RED moment. At Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, the team plays in covered air conditioned stadium. The stadium has a retractable roof, so when weather truly permits they can play with the roof open and they can keep real grass as the turf. However, the last 2 nights the D- Backs played, the team kept the roof open- despite being 112 degrees! But no fear, they just cranked the AC more so the fans would be comfortable! So instead of keeping the roof closed and running the AC at one level, they chose to open up, and try to cool a 50,000 seat stadium. And you know what- IT WORKED! Yes, they showed on the scoreboard that it was a comfortable 80 degrees inside the park with the roof open and the AC on full tilt. I mean is that not nuts? Maybe they are doing something organic to keep it cool, but unless someone can tell me different, I think a huge waste of energy is going into the Arizona atmosphere nightly. Oh and by the way, one of the big sponsors of the team is the local power authority… I guess that’s a no brainer eh?

I have a few more items, but I am going to save those for a post later in the week… yes another week with multiple posts- but why not, with this blog growing the way it is, I don’t want to stunt the momentum. Plus I’ve been told if I go too long, I'll lose people, so gotta stay with my version of “Short Attention Span Theater”

This week’s video however is…. in honor of the Sopranos much talked about ending, one of the literally thousand "Fake" endings or parodies on the web. (Yes everyone from the Pirate Parrot to Hillary Clinton has done it)... maybe if it ended like this there would be some closure...