Quasisimilarity of power bounded operators and Blum–Hanson property

We construct a power bounded operator on a Hilbert space which is not quasisimilar to a contraction. To this aim, we solve an open problem from operator ergodic theory showing that there are power bounded Hilbert space operators without the Blum–Hanson property. We also find an example of a power bounded operator quasisimilar to a unitary operator which is not similar to a contraction, thus answering negatively open questions raised by Kérchy and Cassier. On the positive side, we prove that contractions on ℓp spaces (1⩽p<∞) possess the Blum–Hanson property.