An article over the weekend in a left wing newspaper here...

An article over the weekend in a left wing newspaper here compared the methods used by the "from zero to billions in a few years" individuals at the top of the Forbes rich list with those of their historical counterparts at the end of 19th century. So we are talking about the Carnegies, Mellons, Morgans, Vanderbilts, Rockerfellers, etc. compared with Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, etc. (and maybe your own Gina Rheinhart and Rupert Murdoch?)

Apart from the obvious thing of buying land in the middle of nowhere and using public companies with dumb stockholders to connect it up with barely profitable railways that caused the land to 5 bag, the no. 1 method, oh I forgot, apart from securing a monopoly and ruthlessly leveraging it to wipe out competitors for miles around, of enrichment was stock dilution (abuse of the minority shareholders by the majority shareholders?). And this of course, whether it is intentional or not (or done through massive ignorance e.g. no interest in Middle East politics) just makes my blood boil at the thought of up to about $30m in potential value of Mehdiabad going to MAK shareholders to acquire cash and a dividend gobbling black hole still with exploration risk (Wonarah). It is now clear Bashar Al Assad is finished, so next on the agenda will be regime change in Iran.

It is crystal clear to me, but evidently not to our directors, that regime change will have to occur in Iran shortly (which will substantially change the value of Mehdiabad). The reasons are:
1. Common interest of every Western country in there not being a new cold war or a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and therefore not allowing Iran to purchase "nuclear ambiguity" to project power. (The West will never agree to a non-transparent nuclear programme, however unjust that might appear to Iranians).
2. Significant economic discontent in Iran (and it isn't going to get better without regime change - or a titanic volte face in foreign, nuclear and economic policy).
3. New signs of desperation in arresting? killing? an Iranian translator (the translator of "Funny in Farsi") and in imprisoning the father of an Iranian out of reach of the regime (in Holland) who posted some jokes about an Imam on Facebook. The leadership always resorts to hostage taking when it can't get what it wants? Even mild jokes in good taste threaten the closed system the regime needs to remain effective. Improving relations with the USA, getting more Western tourists to visit Iran or allowing Iranians to have a more relaxed view of the majority religion would be the end of the closed system the regime needs. Avner Cohen (one of the speakers in one of the conferences on regime change prospects I posted a while back) is right: the status quo in Iran will not remain by the end of this year. Syria finished. Iran next. This is not the time to be diluting us out of Mehdiabad, IMO.

Received an email from a company employee with an Iranian surname the other day. She asked if I wanted to continue receiving company ASX announcements. It is the first sign I've ever had the company might care about Iran, but then again she might just have the surname by marriage.

I suspect the real reason our Board wants control of Sandpiper is that when it comes to equity capital raising (it is a total load of rubbish about it being easier to finance with 2 shareholders compared with 3) is that it is easier to have one master in charge when it comes to choosing the timing of raising equity finance: there will always be one company that will suffer disproportionately from stock dilution when one of the two dictates the timing to the other? That's where millions of dollars in shareholder value go out of the door. In seeking to avoid that Mr Jordinson is doing it anyway by giving Mehdiabad away un-derisked. How stupid is that?

My "hold" recommendation is only on the basis that you never know your luck (tropical disease, lightning, etc. may strike). I am reduced to throwing darts at pictures of our directors (except the foreign directors). All IMO. DYOR.