Hi all, Last November I enlightened (hah!) the PE debate by...

Hi all,

Last November I enlightened (hah!) the PE debate by commenting on COP's 10-Q which stated they had made provisions and provided WPL with indemnities against any losses related to the sale.

Well.... I've just blown my eye balls out by reading their entire 10-K (annual accounts) which came out 3 weeks ago. (If you want to eagerly rush at reading the smallest legal font permissible by the SEC...be my guest).

I have been involved with SEC, ASX, AIM, and other jurisdictional filings in the past and I can assure you that the SEC ones are by far the most onerous (legally and otherwise) upon management. Every word, figure and potential omission is rigorously assessed through a reiterative qualitative and quantitative risk matrix. And then you sign a statement saying you are personally liable for the accuracy of that statement...D&O insurance doesn't cover omissions.

So my point is...they don't take a comment about provisions or indemnities out of a SEC filing unless they are highly confident those provisions or indemnities are either no longer material or likely.

But they have now. There are no longer any mentions of provisions or indemnities relating to the sale of the Senegal BV coy.

There is also no mention of any legal challenge or other actual or potential risks to completion of the sale; which they would have to disclose.

So it would appear that both COP and WPL are confident that the sale has been successful. But....

not "completed" (?)

This is now a bit of straw clutching. Page 92, Note 6 discusses asset disposals during the year. The language is interesting as they specifically state "...we completed the sale of..." for each asset but specifically omit this phrase for Senegal and just state "...we sold..." Hmmm.

I, like most on HC, am a real fan of this once-in-a-corporate-lifetime asset and hope that FAR can successfully establish and assert their pre-empt rights. I'm just not a fan of 'hope' and 'straw clutching' as foundations for sensible investment decisions.

CN has, rightly in my opinion, taken a non-public route to try to resolve this issue. She has had to be very mindful of the political sensitivities and the strategic end game. Simply put: a junior explorer whose value is less than a rounding error (and whose JV interest is not that material) doesn't immediately put on the gloves and come out swinging and shouting: threatening project instability within a nation's brightest economic hope. They would get smacked out of the ring...permanently. So no doubt CN and the team have been trying every other strategy: subtle...persuasive...direct but with sensitivity.

Yet there comes a point where these avenues become exhausted and the 'last resort' decision to put the gloves on comes nearer and nearer....

It maybe time to lodge the legal challenge?

Cheers,