Just in case you have read this...

Just in case you have read this one.

http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=326270

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Recipe for success
Monday, November 19, 2007
'Tis the season of the year, with more lunch and dinner invitations than the old Speculator can handle. But into the feeding frenzy I must go, in case I pick up any juicy morsels for our readers.

LUNCH TO TALK UP GOLD MINER: Monarch Gold (ASX code: MON) has been on and off the table in the Speculator's portfolio this year and yielded modest profits. We first bought 20,000 at 30.5c (The Bulletin, May 10) after executive chairman Michael Kiernan revealed at a swish media lunch overlooking Sydney's Circular Quay that his stock was trading on a price-earnings multiple of less than four times the projected 2007-08 earnings of 8.5c a share. He predicted also that similar earnings would be achieved the following year from the company's gold mining operations in Western Australia.

Within weeks of that lunch the company announced a one-for-four issue at 25c. So we sold our holding "ex" entitlement at 33c and took up 5000 new shares at 25c. We later let those go at 31.5c (The Bulletin, August 14).

Kiernan is, of course, the former CEO of Consolidated Minerals (ASX code: CSM). He took control of that company as a shell in administration and built it into a diversified manganese-chromite-nickel miner carrying today a stock market capitalisation of $1.14 billion. He resigned last year after ungrateful institutional investors voted to reject what they saw as an over-generous option package for the founding managing director, whom most smaller shareholders recognised as the engineer of the company's growth.

Kiernan has since thrown his considerable energy into Monarch Gold (market cap. $113m). Monarch claims to be the largest Australian-controlled tenement holder on the Eastern Goldfields of WA, with a 2.6 million oz resource base, numerous untested exploration prospects and a production target to reach 500,000oz a year by December, 2009.

He's back in Sydney tomorrow to do the rounds of the brokers and host another media lunch to introduce Monarch's new managing director Matthew Gill, an executive with more than 25 years experience in gold mining in both Australia and overseas. With the gold price up and Monarch shares closing last week at 34.5c, traders may hope that the shares will top their previous high of 36.2c.