is it dart today, metgasco tomorrow?, page-3

That's my very point.

As a DTE shareholder, I think Dart's major shareholder Robert Milner of New Hope has a lot to be p-----d off about the performance of the Dart board and its share price. I also believe MEL shareholders could take a leaf from his book and start looking after their own interests.

MEL shareholders cannot rely on the Federal Government or indeed NSW Minister Hartcher to dig Metgasco out of its troubles. We have some very major self-inflicted own goals here not the least being the total winding back of MEL's Casino operations. MEL is a Casino company, not a North Sydney company.

I just quickly looked at MEL's 2013 Annual Report just out. I see CEO Peter Henderson taking remuneration in excess of $700K out of a company that effectively parked in the long-term carpark. This is a company that in 2009 announced the biggest find of conventional gas ever in NSW - the Kingfisher hole - yet has seen its share price slide to 0.05c from 0.70c in 2009.

I see a board stacked with former ESSO men, with nobody from the North Coast area. Fair enough, they may be experts in their field, but any board has to avoid becoming an echo chamber of its own views. What we can say is that they have shown little expertise dealing with the LTG activists

MEL's major shareholder, ERM, maybe happy with this situation but the rest of us long-term holders cannot be without incurring huge losses.

If MEL is going to get going again, then we need a board with directors who will stand their ground and to protect the shareholders interests. At the moment I'm not convinced we have one. Just cheering on Minister Ian MacFarlane is not going to get MEL out of the doldrums and its self-inflicted problems. If we don't want MEL to become "stranded asset" as LTG has so far successfully sought to do to it, then we will need a lot smarter play from our side than we have seen so far.