lynas threatens to sue., page-72

LYC is an investing tragedy. At one time it was my largest position. Fortunately I sold about $1.50 shortly after the POL was approved, but at a small loss due to having averaged up over time.

Having no position is mind clearing and eye opening. Because I have a strong interest in rare earths I stay current in the space and with LYC. If the price drops enough I could be a buyer again.

LYC shareholders were blindsided by events that took place a year ago in April. I myself did not appreciate the powerful position that Fuziah had within her party and within the opposition coalition until relatively recently. Our self professed experts on Malaysia on this board did not tell us she was on the leadership committee of her party as well as on the opposition coalition. I guarantee you if you gave me the name of a congressman in the States I could tell you in 3 seconds if they represented a threat to a project I had an in interest in. In fact everyone on this board made disparaging and marginalizing comments about her.

After I sold by chance I learned a lot more about the inside story in Malaysia. Part of that story has to do with Lynas' early attempt to locate in another province. What I heard from a very reliable source was that they were rejected by that first state. Why is that important you may ask? For two reasons. what it says about the commitment of the gov't to LYC and what it says about LYC's sense of duty to their shareholders.

We were told the Malaysian gov't asked us to take the new site in Gebeng. If that were all to the story it would make it look like they may have felt responsible for the problem and therefore would go to bat for us as an innocent injured party. Being rejected from the first site had to have been known by LYC. Therefore the gov't owed them nothing as LYC didn't give up a perfectly good site to take a problematic one suggested by the gov't. Had I known that I believe I would have sold earlier.

The second thing it points out is how LYC misled investors. While its technically correct that the Malaysian national gov't suggested the new site in Kuantan, its misleading to leave out that the reason is we were rejected from the first state. What this means to me is that management can't be trusted to present a clear picture of LYC's outlook. this has been reinforced by management's handling of the liner problem and their failure to release timely information on construction delays.