I find it hard to understand your rationale here, what waste of...

I find it hard to understand your rationale here, what waste of capital, shares get returned and there is no fee payable by RMS if they their offer is withdrawn due shareholders voting for the ALK placement triggering a defeating condition.   EXU is the only board that has to pay a large fee if they do not recommend shareholders vote for the ALK placement, which would leave EXU no money for their fees...

EXU and RMS both said in their announcement said that the negotiations were fully cooperative and trying to agree on a deal.  After this RMS deduced (similarly to ALK) that the best they could offer without losing value for their shareholders was the original scrip offer and that they intended to use the defeating condition triggered by the ALK placement as an opportunity to walk away hands clean.  We have the cash to look at other opportunities and plenty of time for more deals.  

Both the original RMS scrip offer (at the time) and ALK valued EXU at about 12c.  ALK (presumably) with the full cooperation of EXU board and due diligence offered less than 12c including the free options.  RMS then decided to try and gain cooperation by adding an additional 5c if they got due diligence cooperation from EXU board.  A good move.

If anything RMS had three advantages that increase their valuation of EXU assets beyond that realised by EXU themselves and ALK.  They had actual local experience in both developing and production, the EM mill (if cheaper to truck the ore there, or to get a fast production start).  Thirdly, they have enough cash to fully finance the mine to production without expensive capital raising.

I find it hard to comprehend why you think RMS holders would be anything but happy with the conduct of their board, achieving due diligence  and being prepared to walk away hands clean when they determined it was not value accretive to their shareholders.  How do you feel at your AGM about the actions of your board trapping you into an ALK offer you can not afford to refuse, and what will happen to the EXU share price with the RMS offer off the table?

RMS has lost nothing in this process, our board has acted prudently obtaining due diligence but not overpaying.  I hope that EXU does not find in hindsight that it has not this opportunity.  I genuinely hope that EXU finds more gold there than RMS and ALK have priced in, and you can bring it to production with less dilution than the RMS offer. However, given that EXU announcement suggested a BFS first quarter 2019, I am very surprised you are expecting first production that same year. 

I will keep a watch on EXU now I have read so much about this, after the share price has settled and the resource results are out and the project financing has been decided it may well be a buy for me.