I think it's still too early in the recovery process for management to worry about the common (or preferred, for that matter). Don't forget, Syncora is still in a slow run down as they can't write new business, so the true value of the common is very tough to call, and if things go badly, it's still very possible there won't be anything left for the common shareholder in the end. I personally find it comforting that adding the 40 million shares of common (worth less than $10M at the time) to the 2nd attempt at an MTA back in 2009 (which involved many hundreds of millions) seemed to have helped tip the balance and win the approval from the counter parties. They must be planning on significant recovery at some point, or why bother with such a paltry sum?
Also, is it really in managements best interest to paint a rosy picture right now? If the return of common shares is part of a JPM settlement (which I assume would be a larger number than with BoA), the value of those shares matters, and given the ongoing RMBS litigation, I still think it's in Syncora's best interest to look like they've been put through the wringer by the banks (which they have) and that they're still hanging by a thread (which they're really not--at least not in the near term).
IMO, everything still hinges on JPM. We need a big chuck of change so we can pull out the oxygen tubes and move forward. The $600M in surplus notes still needs to be deal with, and if we're lucky, a JPM settlement will retire a sizable chunk of those as well.
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