I have a lot of sympathy for the Company's point of view, in...

I have a lot of sympathy for the Company's point of view, in many respects they are right regarding the identity of the potential buyer.

Its also worth noting that shareholders have previously voted in favour of selling theses assets at an EGM in 2014.

Having said that, this situation is partially of the company's own making & has come back to bite people yet again.

They rushed the first announcement out, which had 2 errors in it, the lesser one being using "Southern" instead of "Big" when describing one of the two properties that were being sold and the more important one of failing to disclose from the outset that this was an ALL CASH OFFER.

The company in the past has hide behind non disclosure, notably when it did a deal with Petrohawk on a "term assignment" on leases in the Eagleford shale, allowing many & the market to believe its interest in this term assignment was far higher than it actually was. There are other instances of poor disclosure as well.

In 2010 when it sold its Eagleford leases through a auction sales process, it voluntarily suspended its shares for 33 days, while the process completed so that people couldn't speculate on what price they might get for the sale, or on news leaking out early from those close to the auction.

Yet then, just as now, people will still be able to trade Antares shares on the USA OTC market during this ASX suspension.

In retrospect, given the uplift in the valuation that either of these 2 transactions would give to the company, perhaps it would have been better to again go into a voluntary trading halt until at least one of them had completed. That way the identity of the buyer could be kept completely secret & when the shares did resume trading it would be on a level playing field.

Having only one so called independent non executive director & not complying with best corporate governance practices, will not have helped there case either in self scrutiny of the transaction by the board of directors.


LOTM