snakes in zegna suits, page-3

Agreed bullbar. They need to keep it going all right. They gave it away in the meeting when they said:

"We are fully aware that the last thing we want to do is a highly dilutionary rights issue to shareholders. That is the most important thing you should get out of this because that is the easiest thing we can do to solve all of our problems".

The are basically saying, you should thank us for trying to sell some operating assets before we come back to shareholders and ask for more money on threat of group failure.

Bleak. But as they said in the meeting regarding Vanmag "#hit happens". The last time I recall that time of language used by management was by Jeffery Skilling of Enron fame. I was on that conference when an analyst was commenting that Enron didn't produce quarterly cash flow statements like everyone else. Skilling responded "Well, thank you very much, we appreciate that . . . asshole."

That comment was pretty much the trigger for the collapse of Enron in my view. Some might not think much of it but at that moment on the trading desk, I turned to everyone and shouted "Skilling just called some guy a ..." It was a loss of control and very defensive. To see text book defensive, listen to the tape of the general meeting from about 40 minutes. Shareholders who were very controlled and asking good questions just get shouted down.