Ann: Appointment of Voluntary Administrators, page-32

There will be nothing remaining for shareholders, because the debt levels are too high, they owe tens of millions to people like Lind Partners and Evolution (environmental bonds).

Even if they were able to sell everything, it still would not cover the debt repayments.

Lind Partners often call these things in, signing with them was a death knell signal.

Mt Carlton may well be stranded, because no-one else previously bid for it except NML, so I don't see what will be different next time. Absolutely no-one will want to take on $25 million of environmental bonds, which is a crazy amount.

The mine is just not ever going to produce enough to pay off the environmental bonds, not given the AISC, including the cost of Australian labour.

And I don't ever see the QLD government agreeing to waver the cost of the environmental bonds either, so I think Mt Carlton will just sit there for a few years and NML will totally collapse without any restructure or recapitalization.

The cost of environmental bonds helped kill this one, together with the naivety and ego and selfishness and ineptitude of the directors and management. They were simply incompetent.

You may find that they get a few pennies for Tandarra and the VIC assets, sold for practically nothing to CYL and another explorer, but it will only be peanuts, and never enough to help the company survive.

Interestingly, the question for the QLD government is, who is going to have to pay for the environmental restoration? Will they hold Evolution responsible still, which means that by going under, NML have lumped EVN with a $25 million debt responsibility. I bet that makes EVN happy, so they'll be looking for another sucker to take on the environmental bond debt, good luck with that though.

Gold at an all time high, and a once past producing high quality mine, and the company goes under, who would have thought eh. The technical director obviously didn't know how to look for more gold.

So ...... as for the director who bailed right before the administration, well ..... all I can say at this end of the ASX market is that it was a cowardly effort, but this end of the market is populated with many characters who have no intestinal fortitude or ethics or abilities. You could do worse that add the names of these directors on to your ASX black listed group.

Luckily I only lost 3k, and I've made over 100k on Leo over the past 6 months, so I'm not too badly off, but I hate to lose, I hate it with a vengeance, even losing a single cent, and especially when it's caused by total incompetence, it just gets the acid in my stomach boiling and the old ulcer begins to pain, and I get angry, very angry.

I've already contacted the Administrators, I want a letter right now from them, saying the company has gone into administration and there is very little likelihood of it trading again under a restructure or recapitalization plan, so the I can claim my loss as a tax write-off this financial year. I'll let you know when I get a reply, and what that reply is.

Cheers,
Gw