Hi Tony et al, I gave you a TU for your response to post...

Hi Tony et al,

I gave you a TU for your response to post yesterday afternoon. My last comment about a possible CR at 15-20c range could, without further discussion/qualification, indeed be viewed as slightly flippant. But I do want to be very clear that I am not an insider or try to pass myself off as one. I, like every one on these threads, try to filter information through past experiences or bias (or both) to deduce possible scenarios and outcomes. In other words, we all speculate. After 30+ years in and around the game, I sincerely hope that some (most?) of my ruminations can be viewed as 'high quality' speculation. But all comment espousing anything beyond the next second is, by definition, speculation; without which the world and life would be predictably boring. Nuff said on that issue.

Some of the colour to my flippant comment lies within having worked on both sides as both Board and Banker as well as having known/worked with Gordon for a while some 15+ years ago (but have been out of touch for 10+). I've never held out that GR would be some SP panacea for FAR: in fact I commented at the time that FAR, for a junior, had better than average financial skills with James Clube and Nick Limb and could have easily kept Gordon on a retainer leash at UBS. So I speculated (there's that word again) that it is very unusual for someone like GR to be brought on board to do what he could have done from UBS's office. We know its very unlikely he jumped for the lower salary, so I speculated again that he may just be a bit tired of clipping the ticket and wanted to actually be part of creating something. I'm also very familiar with banker ego; its a tangible asset (in most cases anyway) and likely a large driver for GR to show case his ability/skills on the other side of the fence. This means more than doing a few ECM spread sheets and touching up insto presentations; he knows he has to add real tangible value in this real world of a public company. This IMHO and with great speculation, means delivering some real deals. So yes, he's under the gun. We knew when he joined that there would be a 9 -11 month hiatus for FAR and that they would need to develop a strategy to create new tangible value to counter the reasonably (very?) predicable SP decay that almost always occurs in these circumstances. Its pretty basic ECM strategy....to have plans that help to be SP accretive ahead of known CR requirements. So will they succeed? No idea. Will they be trying very hard? You bet.
It is true that ego often outpaces ability in banking; I'm just thinking its better than even money he's keen to show that one up.

As for the 15-20c range guess. Its purely an ideal, a target every capital needy coy has...to raise capital at meaningfully higher SP than the previous one (11c). I'd bet hard its one of their highest priority internal corporate goals (= bloody obvious). But as I said, we and they can speculate and strategize ad infinitum but at the end of the day, they'll raise it...pretty much regardless of what the actual SP is at the time. My only other comment here is that at low SPs, project equity becomes a more attractive financial option than share equity (which the majors prefer etc, etc).

But hey, ease up a bit on dishing speculation; its life.

Cheers