King, Good post - yes, we cannot say for sure what he has...

King,

Good post - yes, we cannot say for sure what he has done.

However, some suggestions:

He probably was heavily involved with tying up ESG's scrip so that they were not vulnerable. And the recent capital raising, which was done quickly and at a very small discount - avoiding undue dilution is money in shareholders' pockets. (Compare that with Santos' sloppy capital raising. They leaked like a sieve, and even our resident downramper Sathyath was able to leak the Santos capital raising days before it became public.)

Add to that another broad category of 'talking to groups who are not Santos'. I think that just about covers it.

But, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. So, we will see what he and the rest of the board have managed to do.

However, one obvious but overlooked point - WE ARE STILL HERE.

If takeovers were a simple matter of +40% to the VWAP, then why didn't a takeover happened after ESG was shorted down into the 60s? Because Santos wanted to pay more? lol

A: Because they couldn't, and such an approach, as now, would be doomed to fail.

The fact that ESG is still here, and has been able to get to this size in terms of reserves and commercial options, is an achievement in itself.

How much would have ESG have gotten, if HGO had kicked off an auction for all of ESG, by putting their 23% on the market? What you get for 336PJ of 2P, compared with 988PJ, compared with whatever ESG have now, are very very different.

Yaq