anns prior to qrtly reps, page-138

Hi Rise (?)

Funding is the burning issue of the moment. It fact, it the only real issue.

2 years ago AVB had, ostensibly, a very practical and pragmatic approach: to exploit the DSO ore and lever off this to fund or raise finance for development of subsequent projects: AN, AS etc. then Xstrata and PB came along and, in my view, management became distracted. Now we are ever dependant on wildcat hitting a mother lode in order to boost the SP sufficiently to facilitate a sensible CR to fund production ambitions (large or small).

In short AVB is looking ever more financially shaky and vulnerable to a TO and, as someone mentioned earlier, the main and only interested parties are likely to be Chinese. They will get the company cheap too.

BT