Ann: Work commences at Escarpment, page-14

I am not sure about how the NZ insolvency laws work or exactly when the assets revert to L&M, but I do know cash is running out fast and when the cash goes BRL will be a desparate seller. This sort of situation rarely ends well for existing shareholders. This is probably why Coupland ($1bn UK hedge fund) is selling.

I have met Tigers Realm Coal a number of times and their Russian assets are rubbish and their management are the typical small resource type management ie spivvy. Given they have some cash (from the Russians) and they need some real assets, buying the low capex, reasonably low cash cost coking coal assets of BRL probably makes sense. However, these type of management with Russian backers are very unlikely to give existing BRL shareholders a good deal. My experience with these type of management are they are very street smart and likely generate as best deal for themselves as possible ie not shareholders and definitely not shareholders of desperate sellers.

So don't expect a nice fat bid from Tigers Realm!

But they are likely the right sort of management team to get Escarpment into production.

Hamish has has got everyone into this mess, not the coking coal price (although clearly that hasn't been helpful).