Ttotied - what people have forgotten, or prefer to ignore, is...

Ttotied - what people have forgotten, or prefer to ignore, is that prior to the takeover, RED shares had improved considerably from their low point post the unexpected credit raise year earlier. People also forget that SLR picked up over 10% of RED's shares at 26c.

It seemed obvious at the time that SLR paper was "inflated a bit" to try and give SLR shareholders a bit more value in the "merger" (RED shares also seemed to be inflated because the company was about to be taken over by SLR in reality).

I can empathise with you that both Boards came out and said the post "merger" entity would go from strength to strength. They always say that!! As you suggest - "hype".

For what it's worth, I held shares in RED (and kept most of them) around this time, and held trading parcels of SLR twice around that time which were both sold at small, profitable margin. In that sense, I'm one of the lucky ones and grateful that RED finished the KOTH facility and that SLR subsequently bid up the RED share-price and then took over the company at the price they did. And grateful that I got out of SLR around merger time as well (though disappointed I didn't invest in the company a year or two before - those bagging Tonkin at the moment mustn't have been medium-term shareholders in SLR either - the company's share-price performance had been pretty good over the preceding years).