We gain a slight benefit in having shares represent our interest rather than a fixed ownership percentage. To maintain our 17.5%, what we would be doing would be swapping our contractual obligations for the self-discipline of using that money saved to buy a number of CHM shares, which will maintain our overall 17.5%. Using exactly the money saved for share purchases will slightly increase or slightly decrease our ownership percentage, according to market conditions and according to what company financing decisions CHM takes.

This is good for us, being we’re no longer tied down to making payments on demand. Instead, we have the flexibility of having the same interest at the beginning with the complete freedom to increase or decrease our percentage whenever we want to, whatever degree we want.

But here’s the key, best of all (if we can get it) is Option #3: Giving up our interest in CHM entirely and getting a fair amount of cash in return. That way we have the ultimate flexibility of investing or not investing in CHM as we see fit. If we believe FNC is a better investment than CHM, obviously, there’s nothing stopping us from using the money we get from CHM to buy FNC shares instead.

Of course, we would have difficulty putting all that money into FNC. First, in the open market, there are prohibitions against anything other than slow methodical buybacks. So, to put that amount of money into FNC itself anytime soon would require one or more offerings by the company to current shareholders to purchase their shares at massive premiums to current prices; thereby skyrocketing the price of the stock. That would frustrate all the people who think it’s profitable to keep the price down.

You can’t win. There’s no making everybody happy.