Ann: Paul Ryan Welker appointed Managing Director, page-2

This reads like a palace coup has taken place.

Andrew Teo gone both as MD and Director, without so much as a thank you for his 12 years of service to the company. I would give him a pass for his efforts. His main achievements was to keep the company alive even when the gold retreated to under USD1100, while the CEO stuffed up building a new plant and later one of the main shafts which never lived up to its original purpose of hauling ore from underground to feed the expanded new plant.

Teo did an excellent job in keeping the local community happy so that MML was one of the few mining companies that waved though the rigorous review undertaken by a former mines minister that closed, or threatened to close, other mining operations. For the last 8 yeas or so MML has basically operated as a social welfare support system for the local community - when I last looked there were some 5000 people getting some sort of benefits from MML. Unfortunately shareholders got nothing out of MML, until the last couple of dividend payments.

Two other achievements under Teo were the vastly improved financial reporting so that all costs were included in the cost per ounce produced, and that until the recent 20m share issue for the Queensland moose pastures (I mean mineral tenements) there had not been any share dilution.

MML is no under entirely new management, and its not clear to me how they intend to shaft small shareholders. Welker is just a finance guy who could take the company forward or backwards. If he drives the local workforce too hard by trying to remove costs there could be issues down the road for MML's operations in the Philippines.

I only recently bought some shares again, and have no idea if its worthwhile to hang around. GLA.

loki (groundhog seems to have underground, and is probably hibernating)