chm troubles

Todays australian exposes chm soft underbelly.

Oh oh - It looks like the CHM/AH connection was disconnected due to lack of cash. This is a winding up case brought by AH against CHM.

The AH legal bill will be assessed by the supreme court and expect chm to be required to pay before xmas. Then the winding up case starts. Under such circumstances the CHM case against MMX may not proceed while (a) there are winding up proceedings of CHM on foot and (b) CHM do not have their own files.

What would be most illuminating would be the costs agreements between AH the counsel and CHM. Ordinarily we would not get to see them, but if the AH case against CHM proceeds it will all be exposed as AH seek to have CHM wound up.

CITY BEAT: Rebecca Urban | December 03, 2008
Article from: The Australian
BENNY Elias, a former rugby league player who traded the field for the boardroom, must be wondering when his bad luck is going to end.

The Chameleon Mining director has been forced to hand back the 10 million options his boardroom colleagues granted him back in April, shortly after his appointment.

It turns out that the option grant was in contravention of Australian Securities Exchange listing rules preventing options issues to related parties, such as directors, unless permission was first obtained from shareholders.

Instead, Chameleon, which is involved in a monster lawsuit against Murchison Metals over iron ore assets in Western Australia, tried to get retrospective approval at its annual meeting last week. Not surprisingly, the ASX stepped in and stopped the vote.

According to Chameleon's notice of meeting, released just three hours before the event took place, the purpose of the grant had been to recognise and reward Elias for his hard work, without eating into the company's dwindling cash reserves.

Speaking of such, Chameleon is keeping such a close eye on the kitty it hasn't paid its lawyers for months. It was only after its former legal adviser over at Atanaskovic Hartnell issued a statutory demand for the six-figure sum on November 6 that Chameleon, now serviced by Piper Alderman, applied to the Federal Court to have the costs assessed. So much for the Swedish-based litigation funder Chameleon has been crowing about.

Cynics might claim that having a court assess legal costs provides a handy stalling tactic for a company with just $135,000 cash in the bank at the end of September, but it creates a new problem for the miner.

Atanaskovic Hartnell is not obliged to hand over Chameleon's case files to Piper Alderman until the outstanding bill is paid. Chameleon, which is suing Murchison over access to its Jack Hills project, has only three months to prepare its case for trial.