Von: [email protected] - Profil anzeigenDatum: Mi 5 Nov....

Von: [email protected] - Profil anzeigen
Datum: Mi 5 Nov. 2008 18:44
E-Mail: [email protected]
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Here's the email that I sent to Phil Thomas:

"Dear Mr. Thomas,

As a shareholder of Admiralty Resources, I am very confused and
concerned by the recent sale of the Rincon Salar asset.

This asset has been valued by your company in excess of $40 billion,
yet it was sold for $36 million to an unknown and newly formed
company. This transaction appears to have been done in place of the
proposed de-merger to spin off the lithium assets in Rincon Lithium
Ltd., which would have properly rewarded shareholders.

Please get back to me immediately with any information you can
provide
that will make sense of this transaction. In the absence of any
response, or any sensible explanation, I will be following up with
inquiries to the appropriate agencies, both security and law
enforcement."

Here's the response I received:

"Hi

I am just a non-executive director now, but let me give you some
facts:

- no-one valued the business at $40b - that's the value of the
inground
lithium resource if you took it out and sold it at current prices, the
market is so small it would have taken 1,200 years!
- the market valued the whole company on the day of the sale at A$35m,
so the fact it was sold just one part not operating at $35.2m was a
major achievement
- Rincon had a book value of $23m, and a $9m loss - so getting
someone
to buy it for $35m and then asking them to spend US$125m to develop it
and we get to have 10% of the equity should they list was a major
achievement.
- the car market has become severely depressed, oil prices have
halved,
project finance has completely dried up and asset values in latin
America have been decimated, and to top this off Argentina has grabbed
pension assets and nationalised them, making asset protection almost
impossible to insure. Not an ideal climate to launch a new chemical
business in.
- Why sell the Rincon - we had no ability to issue any more shares
(15%
rule), we owed Hawkswood $11.745m and we had a fixed and floating
charge
over the business.
In other words we had absolutely no where to go - except maybe the
obvious.
- The demerger was difficult to implement due to taxation reasons and
had absolutely nothing to do with this asset sale, which I would have
thought was obvious.

There is nothing stopping the board putting in another asset at a
later
time, to replace the cashflow which was PROJECTED to be about $100m
per
annum from RINCON once it got up and running. (this is equivalent to
selling 1.75m tonnes of iron ore per annum).

Your last comment is deplorable as a shareholder and I personally take
offence to it as I am the fourth largest shareholder, but the only one
that has not sold right through this crisis and if you don't think my
interests are not aligned with shareholders interests then you are a
fool.

You obviously don't read our press releases because the Australian
Securities Exchange sanctioned the sale (listing rule 11.4), all
directors made full disclosure, and I worked day and night for two
months trying to secure alternative options but we didn't get there.
Given we have just been through our public audit I suspect ASIC will
have no interest in your complaints as we as a board complied to the
letter, and as a board can do what we believe appropriate in the best
interests of shareholders and we do what we think is best at the time.

Phil Thomas"

So while it seems they have a valid reason for the fire sale, Mr.
Thomas' indignation and arrogance lead me to believe that there might
be more to it.