I think if you take a stake in a new gold mine you need to have...

I think if you take a stake in a new gold mine you need to have a bit of a stomach for the odd setback.

I say setback not catastrophe, because:

(1) Whatever tensions existed everyone played nice until the finance was all sorted and the project underway.

(2) There is a layer of management in place below Don which I would expect to keep rolling along and doing what we pay them to do:

Project Manager (Stephen McEwan)
Contractor (SMS Innovative Mining Solutions)
Exploration Manager (Glenn Grayson)
Drilling Contractor (Orbit)
Tenement and land manager, business development manager (Trevor Dixon)
General Manager, project development (Gary Goh)
Chief financial officer (Stephen Jones)

(3) Staff departures were always on the cards. There was some criticism of Don's tendency to overhype, and his presentation style was a bit hucksterish for my taste, but I didn't think that mattered much. I had more of a niggle about his employment record - there was a period where he seemed to change jobs after 12 months or less, which was a little troubling, although without knowing the story it was hard to judge. But this is the fourth senior position he has left after a relatively short period.

I can't see any reason to panic here. Until I hear otherwise I assume there will be an interim CEO and that the project will keep rolling along. We can take it from Don's resignation that the Sproule departure is a done deal, I would think, so the ins and outs don't really matter. It could be if we knew all the details we would be happy with the change.