William Paley imagined walking along a beach and finding a...

William Paley imagined walking along a beach and finding a pocket watch among the sand and driftwood. He argued that something so intricate and complex could not possibly be the result of random ebbs and flows and must therefore have been made deliberately with skill and care and that it must have a purpose. So too the Universe, he argued; something so complex cannot be the result of chance but must also have a divine creator and a purpose.

Fast forward 200 years to Atlas Iron and apply the same logic. Was the MinRes scheme simply a desperate attempt to assure the future of a failing company, or was it intended as merely the starting point of a process which would raise the profile of Atlas and ultimately involve major companies and the government? The first case (driftwood) implies randomness and could indicate that at 4.2-4.5c we are now nearing the end of a process. More intriguingly, if there was some intelligent design this would indicate that there has been a creator (possibly Atlas management) and a purpose and that we are now at the start of a process that could eventually result in the corporate equivalent of a reliable time-piece. In this case 4.2-4.5c is a baseline valuation