Often in our lives we encounter long serving Presidents be that of the countries or companies, as a long serving President they had their fights to get to the top and stay there. As time goes by, if the President of the country is half decent, there were be many that believe he or she is the correct person for the job. In the case of Fidel Castro when he took leadership of Cuba, the country was ruled by a seemingly puppet administration and the question was for whom? It many ways it was for the American mob for Havana was the Las Vegas of the Caribbean. It is blessed with beautiful weather, a large island of resources and at the time a government very friendly to those with money. The mob controlled the casinos and other aspects of the night life and all was good. When Fidel Castro came to power, he changed that and shortly afterwards the US put an embargo on Cuba for besides closing down the casinos, it took over all the land holdings of the American companies including Hershey which owned 65,000 acres of sugar plantations and a railroad. There were other US companies with large holdings in Cuba and this is called protection of American interests. If Cuba has taken them over and set aside money – there would be a debate over what s fair value or not, but if Cuba had bought out the companies, there likely would have been a short embargo.

If you ever taken or considering taking a Disney cruise, the cruise ship travels around Cuba to Mexico, now that America is opening up Cuba for tourists it is conceivable Disney ships will be stopping at Havana as part of the cruise. If Disney stops then even more tourists will visit Havana. The country they find will not be the same as America for Cuba has nearly 100% free health care and near 100% literacy rate, hopefully in the knowledge base economy, a country similar to Cuba should be able to do well if they are connected to the outside world, if not the internet providers must be salivating to come to the market where everyone is a potential high user of the internet.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, when there is a long period of senior management we all have our reasons why that is so. For some it is because of the power grab they took to get the power; for some it is what they did when they took power and continue to do; the perspectives are both right and wrong. As dividend buyers we tend to like consistent long term management which keeps the company profitable and increasing dividends and not dwell on how they got there but what they do when they are in the driver’s seat.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.