While I get where you're coming from, restricting companies to...

While I get where you're coming from, restricting companies to raising capital only from existing shareholders is problematic. In this case the executive failed shareholders by making a transaction that destroyed shareholder value.....if it was value accretive you/I wouldn't have an issue with it & it's questionable they could have raised that much from existing shareholders even if it was accretive. Usually a purchase would add value & if it's so big (as Tropicanna is) you have to go searching for equity. That's ok. Secondly there are instances where a company might need an emergency injection of cash & quickly only by way of equity to get it through a rough patch in order to survive- think last year when travel companies had their revenue dry up completely. Sometimes institutional investors with deep pockets are the only takers & in those cases if it's an existential threat you'd take dilution over administration. That wasn't the case here, they just made an acquisition that was poorly priced and now shareholders are holding the can for it. You made comment that sometimes all management have to do is nothing for a great outcome & I'd suggest that was the case here. This was a case of empire building for the sake of size but bigger is not always better....returns on equity will be far lower going forward unless the gold price increases sufficiently to cover the exorbitant price they paid for what is a great asset. That's the only thing that would make this work but it's a very risky proposition compared to the in house asset development pipeline that they already had. Fingers crossed for that gold price rise if you elect to hold.