gbe and sumich in the sydney morning herald, page-10

Absolutely thats an option Empire. In fact if they believe GBEs resource is worth controlling ask yourself why buy 51% and not 100%. Its not like they are short of cash to do it right. The answer is simple. To get 100% they have to make an offer to shareholders and a good chunk of them would want more than 40c per share.

By doing it this way that get more than half of the company for a bargain basement price and secure it against any other potential bidders. They can then sit on it and do something at their discretion at some later date if they chose. Why spent $150mil buying it outright when for $46mil you can lock it down so that it is out of reach from others who may see it as a potential strategic resource. Also remember that if they spent $150mil buying it from us via a takeover they would still need to spend money developing it at some point. Cheaper to lock it down and ensure it doesn't compete.

I posted a while back on the economics of increasing supply to increase revenue vs controlling supply to maximise margins. The later is often vastly superior in generating profits. Its rare to control supply to such a degree as we see with China and rare earths and they have shown recently that they are going to milk it for all its worth. How can acquiring additional resource which has the potential to offer alternate supply look like anything other than an attempt to further control supply ?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a radical anti anything guy and I'm not completely convinced that ECE doesn't intend to help develop GBEs resources but I'm also a realist who likes to evaluate risk vs reward. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck I see the very real risk that its going to poop on my foot.

All I seek is for the company that wants to become our partner to offer fair terms. Let us keep our voting rights. If they don't deem us worthy of having a say then what should we expect form them going forward ?

We are but pawns in this game but while we have a vote I suggest to use it. If you vote yes then you are voting to have no say whatsoever in the future. When GBE shareholder have no voting rights, who will want to buy your stock ?