I dont really see that they should be investing in things...

I dont really see that they should be investing in things outside their expertise - the management of NHC is good at digging up coal and selling it
... so if they want to become an investor in another Sol Pat business then they should be upfront and say it

I agree that this is very odd
I think that there was a plan - I reckon that they had after the BHP tilt at Anglo thought they would like to have a go at acquiring some of anglo's so they started the process to raise $'s then BHP pulled deal and Anglo starts narrative of wanting to exit some assets, so NHC continued to look at raising $'s then the fire and they think we might get some assets cheap, so lets continue ... oh the fire may take x months to fix up before a sale ... lets keep going and have powder ready to go if it goes to market
or
something else like we are going to try and pay a large dividend (to suck out Fr credits ?) this would put $ into Sol which could loan money back to NHC for any acquistion at favourable terms to SOL