I agree with your comments about the market conditions for an...

I agree with your comments about the market conditions for an IPO, Kruiser - terrible. As CFE found with Lady Annie, it is a dangerous game to float assets in a dodgy market. If a float falls over, the private buyers know they are in an even stronger negotiating position than they were before.

Personally, I hope CFE sells Marampa privately. It is TS's pragmatism in flicking assets on rather than holding out for top dollar that is one of the reasons CFE has stayed safe and outperformed. You make take a 'hit' on the sale price, but that cash has more buying power in a weak market. Marampa, after one apparent false start, will be sold this time.

As for the iron boom... well, the jury is still out. Rio's comments just a few days ago forecasts a very robust outlook for iron ore growth due to China's growth.

China has been growing strongly this past decade, not because the West has been growing strongly and so funding Chinese growth via buying Chinese exports, but because of their own internal changes - urbanisation, structural changes to their economy etc. These internal Chinese changes is what has led to greater per capita commodity demand in China.

So whilst some of the basket-case economies in the West (like the US!) may cause stock market misery, and even global recession, even modest Chinese growth forecasts require much greater amounts of minerals than are currently mined. Rumours of the end of the iron ore boom are exaggerated, IMO. China is the biggest structural change to the world economy since the Industrial Revolution. Bigger than the USA 1890-1910, bigger than post-War Japan. China is not a 10-year blip.

The Chinese will still pay robust prices for IO resources to 'feed the beast'. I expect they will again with Marampa, and thereafter for the Pinnacle assets. The Chinese will continue to need more iron ore, more coal, more gas, more soft commodities than ever before...

Yaq