how low was that hurdle

Somehow the 2nd tranche of director freebie type options to Lynch and Foley vested!

Quote from the Qtrly:
"The performance requirements for the second tranche of the management and shareholder approved Director share Options have vested with the targets being met over the last year. The Options have a three year term, a 50c exercise price and will expire on 10 April 2011."

They've produced a rubbish amount of gold, the share price has cratered, but by some sneaky devious route employed, performance parameters have been met, and Lynch and Foley now own the 2nd tranche.

I'm shooting from the hip, and I'm too nauseated to work out right now how they pulled this one off - but I will.

Poster 'Rexcel' pointed out to me here that the free options that Lynch got himself and rubber-stamp Foley awarded have very obscure vesting conditions. Here's what he pointed out:

"5. The Options in each Tranche will only become exercisable ("Vest") if and when the performance condition for that Tranche is achieved for a period of 25 or more consecutive or non consecutive day's pre the required date and/or 6 months post the required date."

That is, the conditional Dec 15 option tranche didn't lapse naturally on Dec 15, but 6 mths later, on June 15, and all they needed to do was find 15 NON-consecutive days which could be interpreted as an annualised rate of 50k ozs per annum.

Somehow, in spite of the lengthy delay in the power upgrade, a second mill motor failure, an annual gold production of 17,497 ounces, and a share-price of 21c, they have qualified themselves for performance based options. I mean how LOW would that performance measurement have to be? How craftily drafted in all the fine detail? And they've accepted them too - they didn't have too.

This is what we're dealing with. It's always been a huge reservation I've had about this company.