was ozl offered finance instead of selling, page-16

I do take full responsibility for my own investments, and so probably do most reading this, and we make decisions based on the information we are given, in this case, the information appeared incorrect, but I dont actually think OZ themselves knew how desperate the situation was becoming leading up to halt.

Remember the merger/TO was just complete, and hadnt been fully bedded down yet, the TO was suppose to merge Zinifexs cash with OXs projects and need for cash, problem was it seemed that nobody told AM about the need for the cash, so most of the cash was wasted on AGM and the divvy, zinc prices had already started falling and then copper tanked as well, probably hundreds of millions of dollars were being stripped out of the books, because of the way we marketed our metal, we were paid up front with provisional prices, these prices were then adjusted later (many months later) to prevailing spot, so I could imagine how hard it would be to get a clear picture of the true financial position, and with the speed of the decline in metals prices, in only one direction down, things were going bad..fast.

We were caught with our pants down, if anyone at OZ saw what was happening, no-one acted to take any mitagating action to prevent the collapse, so yes we shareholders have to take resposibility for our investments, but we also trust those in charge of those investments to be on top of the situation and take actions to prevent a collapse, and also to give us shareholders acurate information to base our decissions upon.

It does seem our relationship with our banks had broken down, as you say probably arrogance and poor capital management had the lenders very worried, but the CBA in the end did hand OZ (and sharehorders) an olive branch of sorts, by coming public and saying that they wouldnt enforce administration, now I can imagine that before going public, the CBA would have expressed the same to OZ. This would have been a golden opportunity to sit back down with the banks to try and salvage this trainwreck, but did we try to seize this opportunity, it appears not. From what we have been told here before AM was furious at the last minute attempts to save OZ from the Minmetals TO.


What I would really like to see is the transcripts of the board meetings leading up and during those dark days, does anyone know if they are/would be available, or how long they would be considered in confidence, it would paint a clearer picture of what really happened and who really did destroy so many lives.


Cheers grant


the above is opinion only and written without prejudice