Member Info for addicknt

"$4bn price tag". Hmm.

Oh, and I'd forgotten about the disastrous funding attempt (thanks for reminding me Eloro). What a bleedin' mess that was.

Fwiw, my own view is that there people on here who have completely underestimated the scale of the task Caldwell took on.

The company was clearly riven with division, it's cost base was completely out of control, DC had proved himself to be useless and our main shareholders were still unsupportive. Clearly something had gone badly wrong in Ecuador - how else did we manage to lose $4m to fraud? A lack of senior management in-country meant our relations with the government were taking too long to deliver what we needed, and it appeared we employed every Ecuadorian within a 100 mile radius of Cascabel. We knew we had a great asset, but we had no real idea of what we were going to do with it and, as a result, kept having to go back to the drawing board.

Fort keeps banging on about management snouts in the trough, but the previous regimes took the concept to a whole new level. The business was a total mess and Caldwell is having to sort it out and deserves to be given another year.

Eloro, absolutely. It would be complete madness to boot him out.

SM

1) News to me as well. I assume we're only doing this in the belief it will add something significant to the story.

2) I can't work out the implications of this. Does it mean we're being subjected to yet another missed deadline, or will it be irrelevant?

3) Thanks for pointing that out.

4) I think you're spot on, because it's 100% guaranteed that we won't be spending 400m.

Rcgl, exactly! You cannot make statements regarding the cash position which you know to be false without running the risk of having your collar felt.

SM, not sure I understood that.

I suppose what I was getting at is a point I've made before, which is that it's difficult to describe us as an Aussie business anymore and I assume the Brisbane office is used only for board meetings. Which must beg the question, do we actually need it? In fact the same is probably true of London. If I was a CEO on a cost cutting mission, I'd see those overheads as very low hanging fruit.

FTE's:

1) SC

2) Stackhouse, CFO.

3) Christina Robinson, Director Corporate Operations and Comms.

4) Ryan Kee, VP Finance.

5) Ryan Wilson, General Counsel.

6) Santiago Vaca, Geologist.

7) Perry Holloway, Director Strategic Affairs.

Apart form the fact there appears to be seven and not six of them, we're not exactly overburdened with people who are mining experts, are we? And are any of them based in Australia?

From a brief read-through I can't see anything new, but then again these documents aren't released for that purpose.

I note we now only have 6 full time employees in the 'leadership team' and that a contingency has been made of 716k in respect of employment costs. I wonder if that relates to the action DC is taking against the company?

Eloro, why have you repeated the post?

Eloro, ah, that explains it!

Eloro, actually I've just re-read the email and he did say, ' I've just had some very smart mining experts I know visit the site and they come back (sic) extremely excited about Cascabel and what an amazing deposit we have'.

Make of that what you will.

Eloro, that's interesting. The wording of his email seemed to imply he'd commissioned them. Clearly, he didn't. Anyway, the message is the same.

Tesla, the key question is, why on earth do you care? 84 posts in the past 30 days - it borders on total insanity. What's your motivation? You criticise everyone else for repetition without any degree of self-awareness. Day-in-day-out, exactly the same message. Honestly, we get it; you don't think this is going anywhere. That really is all you needed to say.

Did Mather do something nasty to you in a previous life?

Fort, why are you blaming Caldwell for the failings of the previous management? Surely he's now taking us in the right direction?

Mogg, he's deputy chairman.

Interesting find ICW. Thank you.

RK, yes he has. 30m more reasons to get a result.

Tesla, yes he does have options, but he bought circa 18m shares with hard cash and has held most of them for a long time. By contrast, you may recall DC didn't spend a single penny buying shares. He's got plenty of incentive, and obviously Mather has 90m reasons why he wants this to work.

Banditputin, I absolutely agree with you that we aren't capable of taking this to production and it's always been a complete fantasy to imagine that we ever could. However, one of the key differences between us and SXX is the amount of money the key directors have invested. Their interests and ours now appear to be completely aligned, whereas I always had the sneaking feeling Fraser's weren't. This was also true of Peter Secker at BCN.

Our guys will be fully aware of the many examples of companies being over-ambitious in the mining sector and I believe they are now fully focussed on making sure we don't make the same mistake.

Arapahonation, for the reason mentioned above I think your observation about remuneration is totally spurious. Caldwell's commitment to the project is demonstrated not only by the level of his investment, but also by the fact he was prepared to relocate to Ecuador - not a simple decision at his age. He is hugely incentivized to make this work. DC's remuneration was absolutely obscene, as was Fawzi's, but the days of snouts in the trough are over. Of course, Caldwell's yet to deliver, but he appears to be on the right path. Give him time.

"so in short we need to be up and running for this to be successful" Erm...isn't this true of every mining venture? In fact, it's true of every commercial venture, regardless of sector.