time to strike, page-6

Hardoak,

With respect, I find these sorts of general criticisms of management of large companies a bit like the fat bloke at the footy, who shouts at the elite athletes on his team to 'run faster you useless so and so.' I cannot but smile at the irony.

Of course, shareholders have the right to be critical - we are part owners of the company. But more often than not, we as shareholders don't have all the information about what is happening behind the scenes. Shareholders respond most shrilly when they start to get scared or angry when the share price goes down. If all the fundamentals were exactly the same, but the share price rising, everyone would be happy.

So really, the criticisms are about the falling share price, not what is being done in terms of management decisions.

And what would you have ESG do? - throw all the announcements they have at a retail market that isn't listening, or hold them back for defensive purposes, for the bid they know is coming? Should they preempt a bid by doing something provocative now, or wait until they are closer to their reserves upgrade?

Maybe ESG know that in a short space of time they will have data from Tintsfield. That means extra reserves and hence extra money. And maybe ESG are waiting for other boxes to be ticked - commercial, regulatory, political..? Again, without all the information it is impossible to say for sure. But I strongly suspect ESG are playing the game of holding their fire in order to give themselves more time, and create more shareholder value at the back-end. That has been their approach all along.

Now that may create more shareholder pain for some in the meantime, but I doubt ESG are going to sacrifice the endgame to appease us. If anything, it is evidence that ESG's hand is not going to be forced, because with known multi-party interest, they know the starting share price is not going to prejudice the endgame. When there are many gas-hungry bidders at the auction, the starting price is irrelevant.

Yaq

And Buddy, take note. Your criticisms of 'the Jockey' are from guy hiding behind his pc, who is not even prepared to front up at the AGM, identify himself, and ask the hard questions. Maybe that is because you would be found to be out of your depth. Ever run an ASX 200 company that will be sold to a major energy company? enough said...