this seller's farewell.

Dear SNV owners,
I have owned SNV shares for several years. It's something I would in fact regret a great deal more if I had not had some very much needed luck elsewhere. but it is time for me to move off the register and before I go I would like to express my thoughts.
It has been more than a year since the All Ords bottomed in March 2009. China and India continue to buy resources at an extraordinary rate, supporting prices for commodities like thermal coal. At the same time, growing investor anxiety over potential sovereign debt defaults has seen the price of precious metals like gold and silver surge.
What has SNV been involved with in recent years?
Well I believe exploration at Hebi, the targets being silver and manganese with gold credits. The manganese extracted was going to revolutionize - in a way that would be very profitable for SNV - treatments for acid mine drainage. Well acid must be laughing all the way to the drain.
So let us look at silver prices. They have moved a great deal higher in the last few years given the stuff's used in all manner of high tech gadgetry. But SNV hasn't turned its exploration prospects into so much as a nano-gram of saleable metal.
Then SNV management switched the company's focus to coal mining, an initially reassuring move which has come to nought because the Communist Government of the People's Republic of China ordered all mines in Henan to close, supposedly while a safety review was undertaken. Subsequent to that news we are told that one of SNV's two coal mines in Henan is subject to an enforced consolidation order and that management has been unable to determine the precise mechanism by which a vaguely worded reference to compensation is to be activated. Strangely, death trap coal mines continue to operate and kill mine workers in other parts of China. It must be a coincidence.
A look at the share price graph of SNV going back two years is also instructive. No matter how many excuses management want to trot out, the fact remains it and the board have presided over a very sorry example of wealth destruction.
And a line in the quarterly activities report published on April 30 reveals why we should not be surprised.
Under the heading "corporate activity" - a term employed with not a trace of irony - management states that one of the uses to which $2.362 million in funds raised from sophisticated investors would be put was to "retire debt". There you have it. A management mentality that thinks it's okay to pay down company debt by selling new equity. Enough.
June 30 approaches. Given certain beneficial investments made by this poster, I believe the time has come to at last realize my loss on this woefully managed organization, and learn another lesson from balance sheet of life. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for hearing me out.