Offtake Agreement Secured, page-36

Don't Dis Westcott. I have never ever read anything from him that wasn't factual and cant ever recall him advising anyone to buy SDL. Nobody anywhere outside of SDL knows more about this project. You have to remember at the time we were talking about the $1.00 party there were (only) a Billion shares on issue. (can't believe I look at it as ONLY a Billion shares). China was complaining about Vale and BHP having too much control of the I.O. market. There was a real move to incorporate Gindalbies assets into create a Magnetite and a Hematite producer over two continents. And the share price was moving from 60 cents to 80+ cents.
This all changed after the plain crash, in reality that was the end of SDL. Our entire board wiped out (RIP), and a Chinese Triad Entity buys out our major shareholder. If Talbot was still alive, this would have been up and running years ago (IMHO).
George Jones had to step back in to save SDL, even though his health was one of the reasons why he stepped down. Remember , those people that died on the plane were all there because of George. He had to do every thing possible to keep SDL viable, even if it meant dealing with Hanlong after they missed deadline after deadline. We were no longer negotiating from a position of strength.
Trying to sell a third of the mines for a Billion dollars, and then asking them to put in Billions to develop. In other words asking for a Billion dollars for the right to spend 4 billion dollars!!! Would You??
Like many of us, Westcott really believed in this project, not just because of the potential, but because it was so important to Cameroon. However a company with a market cap of only a few hundred million (back in the day) trying to raise 4 billion, without the financial backing of Ken Talbott, we were always pushing it up hill.
Now due to our lack of funds, we've been forced into corporate machinations that have effectively robbed retail shareholders of any real traction.
Retrospectively it's easy to criticise somebody, but in the context of what was happening at the time, there was immense optimism. So I hope this gives you a bit more context.
GLTAH