Ann: Trading Halt, page-42

While retail holders do often get ripped off by the big end of town, that is not what is happening at STM.

Many posters here had started agitating about a cap raise being required within two to three quarters. If the company leaves it too long then everyone knows cap raise is immanent and the stock gets sold off by deep pocketed investors who know they can buy it back cheaper in the cap raise. It happens to every stock. The only way to defeat this pattern is to pull a surprise cap well before funds get short. This is in the interest of all shareholders and actually denies high street the easy sell and buy back later trade.

The discount is not a conspiracy either. To get the volume in a cap raise, a discount is required. It is standard practice. Retail investors simply don’t have enough money if it is a rights issue.

True, they could have pulled the trigger earlier at a higher price using 20/20 hindsight, but management probably thought the share price would go higher so held off. I don’t think management were expecting high grades in the first hole at Alba, so they weren’t ready for cap raise. I’ll bet they were ready after the second hole at Alba. If that second hole at Alba had also been 2gpt Au then I’m sure they would have pulled a raise at 12c plus on that news, but the grades were lower and they got stuck in a difficult position of deciding when to pull the trigger on a declining share price trend.