mon wins award

From todays Australian. Says it all doesn't it!

"THE inaugural Daily Assay award for the over-titled category of In The End The Answer Was So Simple It Is A Shame That No One Thought Of It Earlier is a tie.

We just can't split Oxiana/Zinifex and Monarch Gold which are both worthy recipients of the award which comes with handwritten certificate and a half-used Stabilo Boss fluorescent yellow highlighter.

Oxiana/Zinifex became contenders after it announced today that the merged entity would be known as OZ Minerals.

Not Oxifex. Not Ziniana. Not OxiZinifexymania. And definitely not PZoxianiinifex with the P at the front being silent.

No, the clever little devils have come up with OZ Minerals by taking the O at the front of Oxiana and combining it with the Z at the beginning of Zinifex.

Hey presto! OZ Minerals.

``OZ Minerals is a strong name representing the powerful heritage and achievements of both companies,'' Oxiana said in a statement.

``Taking the first letters from the names of both companies also symbolises this merger of equals.''

All hail equality and all hail OZ Minerals as the new flagship bearer for all things minerals and all things OZ.

Just don't confuse it with that quirky little show about how criminals interact in a maximum security prison in the US, also called OZ.

Now the other equally deserved winner of Daily Assay's inaugural ITETAWSSIIASTNOTOIE award is Monarch Gold after it confirmed the market's worse-held fears that its Davyhurst operations weren't going too flash and needed to be shut down, post haste.

The writing was on the wall and in black and white in Monarch's recent quarterly for the three months to the end of March.

Receipts from product sales and related debtors for the March quarter came to $8.28 million.

Payments for production cost Monarch $20.84 million.

Net operating cashflows was $15.5 million and when that is added to a $6.17 million loss on net investing cashflows, total operating and investing cash flows was in the negative to the tune of $21.67 million.

Even worse was the notion that Monarch was roughly paying the same amounts for both exploration/evaluation and administration - $2 million a quarter.

Behind every good mining company is an equally as good administrative team.

But the Davyhurst operation has always been tricky to manage because of the geology which made modelling the deposit difficult.

Monarch boss Michael Kiernan decided to take the plunge at Davyhurst at the same time he was overseeing the running of Croesus Mining which owned the deposit.

It wasn't Davyhurst which sent Croesus broke, but there is some speculation in the market that Monarch got the raw end of the stick when it came to relying on the Croesus modelling of Davyhurst as it plunged headlong into trying to deliver on its dreams of becoming a 500,000 ounce a year gold miner.

Monarch shareholders have every right to ask why Monarch did not spend more on the exploration/evaluation front at the expense of administration.

So as you see, shutting Davyhurst makes Monarch also a worthy winner of the In The End The Answer Was So Simple It Is A Shame That No One Thought Of It Earlier award. "