So Conrad Black has been convicted as a fraudster. For a neat summary of how the media responded to the verdict, go to Macleans.

Now attention turns to the appeal and what he's likely to get. One thing's for sure: the presents Conrad Black was giving out to his friends over Christmas, autographed T-shirts with Black's picture on the front above the words "CONRAD WILL WIN", will now be collectors' items.

Black has been found guilty on three counts of defrauding outside shareholders in his newspaper company, and one of obstructing justice but acquitted of other charges ranging from tax fraud to the serious charge of racketeering. He also was acquitted of fleecing Hollinger shareholders through such perks as taking the corporate jet on a two-week vacation to the island of Bora Bora. His lawyer Edward Greenspan said there'd be an appeal and disputed the obvious conclusion that his client was facing a long spell in jail. "Conrad Black was acquitted of all the central charges," he said.

It's a view shared by Black's biggest cheer leader Mark Steyn in his blog:

"There will be recriminations a-plenty over what was just announced on the 12th floor in Chicago. Conrad Black was found NOT GUILTY of racketeering, NOT GUILTY of tax fraud, NOT GUILTY of the CanWest scheme, NOT GUILTY on Bora Bora, the Park Avenue apartment and Barbara's birthday party, NOT GUILTY on the individual non-competes on US newspaper sales. He has been found GUILTY in just two narrow areas - "obstruction of justice" re the security camera footage of him removing boxes from 10 Toronto Street, and three "mail fraud" counts relating to the APC non-compete agreement, in which (as the government argued) Black and Radler paid Black and Radler not to compete with Black and Radler ... The government alleged three schemes - the "US scheme", the "CanWest scheme", the "perks scheme" - and upgraded them to racketeering, and threw in tax fraud. They lost on racketeering and tax. They lost outright on two-thirds of the schemes. And on the remaining scheme - the "US scheme" - they lost on everything but the APC non-compete fee. Yet, absent successful appeals, four men could be spending the rest of their working lives in jail. The US Attorney's office might usefully adopt as its motto the IRA's message to Mrs Thatcher after the Brighton bombing, "You have to be lucky every time. We only have to be lucky once."

Yeah right! Steyn has missed the point completely. The prosecution's case was so complicated that no-one expected all the charges to get up beyond reasonable doubt. As Black's nemesis Patrick Fitzgerald told the media after the verdict: ""We have a burden to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt. They should hold us to that burden. And in a number of counts, they found that we met that burden and they convicted. And on a number of counts, they found that we didn't. We're going to respect that." And in any case on those three counts of fraud, Black is facing at least 20 years inside the cooler. Given that he will be 63 next month, that could be a life sentence. And that's regardless of the charges where there was an acquittal.

Black's downfall was the result of his overbearing arrogance, says the Globe and Mail's Jacqui McNish. But then, the story is more complicated than that.

Black could never have got away with it for so long if he didn't have crony boards. And that sends a signal to investors and other directors.

As Paul Maidment says in Forbes: "Whether Sarbanes-Oxley, had it existed in the late 1990s, would have restrained Black's swashbuckling is doubtful. It was intended to hold top executives personally accountable for their companies' actions and focus the light of transparency on their company's accounts. That is a job that shareholders should have had their boards do, and which, in Black's case, took far too long to happen-especially since his crimes lay in plain sight.

"Today again, we have record stock prices-some say a bubble in the making, The huge salaries and perks have perhaps migrated from public companies to the more opaque world of private equity and hedge funds. Hubris has been replaced by schadenfreude. But greed will surely have its day once more, unless shareholders learn their lesson and do more to make their boards accountable.

"Pay has to be for performance, not parties; and boards have to ensure that executives don't treat shareholders' money as if it was their own."