Hatsoff,You said:"If Eddie was the chairman of Cooper you would...

Hatsoff,

You said:

"If Eddie was the chairman of Cooper you would see total honesty and transparenty."

There is no lack of honesty or transparency with the current board imo, but a lack of success in Cooper's off-shore endeavours has caused frustration with long term holders of COE; at least the Cooper Basin reserves keep increasing and paying for the 'Company maker' potential in spite of the flood affected 398,859 barrels of oil production last year, an increase in reserves of 940,000 BOE to 2,500,000 BOE (plus Indonesia production & reserves), $39,100,000 of oil revenue, a 45% success rate for 11 wells drilled, $72M in the bank...you call that apathy (meaning a lack of interest or concern, especially regarding matters of general importance or appeal) - you must be either joking, a mate of Eddie Smith or just plain ignorant.

I believe there is a lack of honesty and transparency from your admired Eddie in his 'apparent' efforts to change the board of Coopers. At one stage, he was going to attempt to replace the whole Board, including Chairman Shervington and become Chairman himself; now he wants to keep Shervington as Chairman and sack others including Porter who, amongst other activities "initiated WMC's Oil / Gas section in early 1975, resigning as General Manager in late 1988 having established reserves in the Cooper Basin and production in offshore WA, and offices in Adelaide, Perth and Houston. He joined Santos Limited in early 1989 as Manager - Technical Services"; who better to oversee CB activities?

Surely not Eddie the entrepreneur who had to sell off Impress Energy (with Growler, Snatcher fields and other PELs, for what is now seen to be a pittance, to Beach.

At least Eddie got the $2.6 million in loans, from entities controlled by him, repaid by the Company when Beach bought his shares plus a swag of cash for the shares that, in part, I believe he held due to under-writing a poorly supported capital raising as well as other holdings.

Cooper has been in a potential take-over/merger position due to their large cash holding and grossly undervalued share price with their Cooper and many other prospects.

Broker reports are usually bullish and target a value well above current share prices of stocks making it easy to announce that it is the fault of Directors as Eddie has done.

In my opinion, he has no chance of getting the 50% he will need to overthrow the current Board. Too many institutional holders to convince for one thing.

So! what's he up to?

Probably got wind of the potential take-over/merger offer in the wings (as admitted by Shervington in his recent Address to Shareholders where he said Coopers were in preliminary discussions with a number of companies with a view to merging with, or acquiring, Cooper Energy) and decided to buy up a heap of shares while they were cheap and attempt to get an auction going between interested parties at an early date while Coopers do not have an established CEO and make another few million for Eddie; all for minimal effort and a temporary injection of some petty cash.

Must admit, I will sell for a figure between 70c and a dollar; sure will help the pension fund...