unassuming aurora takes home the gold , page-8

OGG

I'm not invested in Antares and haven't followed it. It seems that the raising in June 2010 to which you refer at 60c was 3c greater than the SP and is approaching 20c greater than the price paid on the market yesterday to buy back a parcel of shares for cancellation.

If you are holding up this company as a benchmark standard for capital raisings, I regret that I cannot agree that their strategy has endeared them to prospective institutional investors. Besides which, the raising was about 10% of AUT's latest raising and the company is about 15% of the size of AUT.

Speaking from the viewpoint of an investor AZZ, if I was one, I would not applaud the loss of about 1/3rd of the value of my investment over the last 6 months.

On the other hand, speaking as an investor in AUT, I doubled up my investment after being pushed out of ADI and I paid about 85c on average. Over a comparable period my investment has multiplied by about 2 1/2.

It is a "dumb ass" question, but which board's strategy should I prefer?

As to the "dumb ass" deal, it is most unlikely that they had the Australian institutions, the Canadian Institutions and the vendors of the land interest, and Hilcorp, of course, all round the same table at the same time. They could no commit to the land deal until they had some form of commitment for the A$120m cash raising from the institutions. These negotiations will have taken time. The share was trading at about 150 cents just 10 days before the land deal announcement: that is, 10 cents BELOW the issue price.

Furthermore, as I have pointed out, the share straightlined at about 180c, so far as I can see from the graph, until the details of the capital raising were released. The market has approved the whole deal. A lot of people got their wallets out and put their sour grapes back in the freezer.