Mighty, what's your take?, page-2

Suspension due to increasing trading volumes prior four days with yesterday greater than double the recent average.

The news blackout will only intensify trading activity leading into Friday. While trading is normal activity on the market, concern this is an extraodianry event due to the media exposure. The board are concerned that volatile trading on the days leading up to Friday might influence long term holders to sell in fear of bad news reported on Monday.

The board do not want a situation where long term holders sell in fear when it is known by the board that the mixed bag of news to be reported on Monday could support the SP. The timing of this announcement is due to increased volume and intensity in trading activity

The board, cognisant of threatened litigation, do not want a situation where holders sell at a loss on Friday only to find out on Monday that the company has a strong future.

There is no 'positive' aspect to the announcement because it is explaining the reason for suspension. There is no point in extending commentary any more than said, the stock is not tradong so additional 'positive' news has no effect and will be superseded by the actual result avaialble prior to trading opening.

There is differing opinions on the criteria and assumptions used to measure goodwill that is why it is taking an inordinate amount of time. To complicate this further, due to the number of acquisitions on the books in provisional accounting stage (less than 12 months) there is an element of goodwill consisting of WIP that was not booked as WIP at FY15 (eg NIHL and others). The WIP (non-booked) is inherant in goodwill needs to be stripped out and appropriate future cash flow assessment of earning in the various divisions calculated discounted to present day at an appropriate rate considering its curren tmarket cap.

The above is why the statement says "there are certain material items in the half year results which are not yet finalised, including as foreshadowed in December, testing and assessment of of the goodwill values for impairment of the UK business".

Before goodwill can be fully tested for the purpose of this half report management / advisers / auditor need to agree on how much of non- booked WIP inherent in goodwill has been billed, or reclassified as WIP. In addition, billed work since end of HY, while not impacting 1HFY15 result it will impact the calculations for goodwill -i.e. back it out of calculation, keep it in calculations or it forms part of an impairment (if do not consider likely to recover)

Extra provisioning for Slater's loan doe snot suggest about to call the loan in

If additional funding was required, it is likely that would be known by now after seven weeks of analysis involving McGrath, FT, PWC, management and E&Y. In that scenario the announcement would have indicated discussions with sources of funding.

If in real danger of administration then the same as above. There are special circumstance surrounding law firm - it is answerable to not only the ASX but primarily to the Solicitor Regulation Authority that has strict criteria over trading viability to protect integrity of the legal system.

My short version of all that is: trading volumes picked up and the company do not want spurious information about leaks to influence investor (note I say investors not traders long or short) decisions prior to Friday.

One final thought. If Monday is to be bad news, the company would be hard pressed to explain why it didn't allow the opportunity for investors to dis-invest rather than take a risk over the weekend. Traders are less of an issue as that could be explained away by their trading behaviour. Therefore a trader would be hard pressed to call foul but a long term investor faced with terrible news on Monday could have reason to call foul if an escape route on Friday was denied.