As I understand it the placement was a small private placement...

As I understand it the placement was a small private placement made the weekend of 16Aug08. I've been a reasonably active shareholder since 2005. I was approached for additional capital that weekend. It was a stressful time, the company was running low on operating capital (maybe completely run out!). There was no mention of the interest from Dubai (even if it had the past record of 'close' deals wouldn't have instilled a lot of confidence).

I decided that it was either a historic buying oportunity or the last roll of the dice ( I was particularly concerned that the monthly log chart was close to breaking the uptrend that had been in place since 2001 - as things transpired it did break at end of Aug) and figured if CTO went under and I lost the house I could do a lot worse than move the family to live with my father-in-law in the country. I was hoping like hell that enough other shareholders would be chipping in to keep the company alive.

I figured the barrel was dry when I sent a couple of cheques 19Aug, priority paid, and had both banks ring me the next day to authorise special clearances.

Boy was I relieved when the Dubai deal was announced, although we're not out of the woods until we can produce gold profitably and consistently.

My guess is that they raised enough in a small private placement to see them through to the Dubai deal whereas a public SPP would have taken too much time (not provided necessary working capital quick enough and been completed after Dubai money had arrived). I think the Dubai guys might also have been delaying deal closure to force management to offer them a better deal. But who knows?

However, maybe I'm naive, but I do think this is one of the few companies on the ASX (and I've been a shareholder of many over the years) where management interests are aligned with shareholders, not least becasue ML's family hold such a large shareholding. I'm hoping we're getting close to bringing to fruition the patriarch's (Jim Lynch) dream of mining gold at CT that kicked off in the early 1970s! It's been a long road, and you certainly can't question the commitment of the Lynch family - the rate of delivery on promises has been a 'little' disappointing though, especially with gold touching above AUD $1400 the night before last.