private equity play

As of 21 August, 2009, EWI held 46% of EWC shares and the top 20 shareholders owned 83% of EWC shares.

In my opinion, the implications of this are as follows:
1. EWI is unable to sell any shares unless it is prepared to sell all its 720milion shares.
2. EWIs interest in EWC is long term and, as long as financial institutions providing loans to EWC are comfortable with EWC business plan and project developments and as long as co-investors for specific projects are prepared to invest in such projects, EWI is unconcerned about the daily/weekly/monthly share price fluctuations.
3. EWIs aim for EWC is to make it a leader in modular LNG development and a significant supplier of natural gas to Asian markets (UBS conference June 2009)
4. With over 80% of the issued number of shares (1.3 billion) held by the top 20 shareholders, most daily trade volume is affected by smaller shareholders trading the remaining free floating 260 million shares.
Therefore it looks obvious that share investments in EWC are best held for the long term. Remember: Warren Buffet says that if you are not prepared to hold shares for 10 years, do not invest. His preferred investment horizon is forever!!