Member Info for Montmuzard

Domicile isn't a basis for taxation, residence is, and generally only exists in common law jurisdictions. Russia doesn't recognise domicile. Residents in Russia will pay tax due to being tax-resident there, their domicile is irrelevant. But you carry on.

What's IG's justification for only allowing sales of EUA stock? It's a British company, not sanctioned in any way, so the fact that it owns Russian subsidiaries is neither here nor there (and if it were an issue, surely they wouldn't allow any trading at all). Sounds fishy to me: piling up stock for the MMs to gobble in the coming re-re-rate?

"why would you need to a hire in a very experienced (and presumably well connected) M&A guy to close out a deal?
Why wouldn't you, especially given how complex the transactions presumably are, and how that has likely been complicated by the ongoing geopolitical instability?

"The appointment feels much more to me like EUA had someone ready to buy their assets, who now can't due to sanctions/reputational hazard, and so EUA are having to pivot to BRIC countries (i.e. mainly China / Southeast Asia where Matyushok specialises) in order to find another buyer".
It's possible that this is true, but if the original credible party that informed them in writing that it had completed due diligence had equally informed them in writing that it had pulled out then they would have to update the market. Given that every recent RNS has said business as usual, it's equally (if not far more given his expertise) likely that Artem's appointment relates to the hydrogen project and the PGM/nickel deals are ready to roll.

"I would point out that Matyushok i also on the board of H2Transition so it's possible he's only been brought in to work on EUA 2.0 whilst EUA 1.0 sits on ice."
So if you think he's been brought in to work on EUA 2.0 why are you also saying above that he's hawking the other assets around to BRICS buyers? It's far more likely, in my view, that the first part of your comment here is right, but not the second: he's been brought in to work on EUA 2.0 (he may even be the missing jigsaw piece to keep things ticking over after the fundamental change of business) while the EUA 1.0 deal isn't on ice at all, but is rather very close to being executed.

"If its a full asset sale I guess we wont have shares in EUA2?"

My suspicion all along has been that, if the EUA 2.0 is going to take the hydrogen project forward, there'll be a dilution down the line with existing shareholders given the opportunity to reinvest some of their dividend from the EUA 1.0 asset sales into the new company. However, with today's news - and ongoing questions over Russia since the war - it could well be that Artem is being put in place to facilitate a quiet disposal down the line. Either way, it's all gravy for existing shareholders IMO.

"I don’t believe his contribution can be fulfilled / measured in just weeks. More likely the asset sale will not be put forward to shareholders until Q3 / Q4 2022"

There is no evidence whatsoever for that assertion, especially given the company has identified the need to speed the process up. Anyone who buys this line and thinks they can park their stock for a while will simply be letting shorters exit cheaply and could find themselves locked out when the big one drops. Personally, I think it's far more likely Artem has been appointed at the end of the process - to help execute and steer EUA V2 beyond the disposals of Kola/Nickel - than he has to get knee deep in the weeks of the negotiating process. Deal done IMO. We're just waiting for the final dots and crosses.

A few thoughts. One is that this appointment took everyone by surprise: it's clearly tied towards the transition of the remaining assets into EUA2 or whatever once the PGMs and Nickel have been hived off. Is Artem going to be the new CEO of that entity? Or are Rosneft going to take it onboard? Will it be merged with one of his other hydrogen business? Who knows. What we do know, though, is that it's very much business as usual. Indeed, more so: we've progressed even further beyond where we were when the share price was 40p+ and, indeed, when the US investor paid 26p last year.

Another is that the idea we now have to wait months strikes me as extremely presumptuous: there's no reason why the assets cannot be sold in a series of transactions - indeed, isn't that what many of us are actually anticipating? - and it could well be that Artem's appointment was a final jigsaw piece required to begin executing.

With that in mind, I did wonder whether the reference to the knowledge of "Eurasia" in the RNS was not actually about the company per se, but rather the geopolitical and geoeconomic entity of Europe-Asia. As in: is Artem the man who can tie together the Russian state, powerful Russian businesses, and the Japanese and Chinese connections? Is he the man that everyone across the board is happy to have steering the ship when it re-emerges from the port?

Finally, it's truly wonderful watching the green coffins panicking: their paymasters have almost 40m short-sold shares needing to be bought back, and they know that they'll now have to do that amid a steadily rising share price that they're desperate not to spike upwards while having the anxiety that news could drop any moment that puts a rocket under it. Rums all round shipmates!

Oh, and good luck with your MSc Fran/Kira. Maybe when you get to Manchester, you can hold court amongst the economics lecturers and professors with their PhDs and teach them a thing or two about how to analyse matrices. I'm sure they'll learn a lot. If they refuse to listen, just call them out on Twitter or send them hundreds of emails about it a day. They'll eventually appreciate your endeavours to help them, even if it doesn't seem like it initially.

@Web - This could be part of the explanation for the suspension IMO. Imagine if we're actually in an effective full company sale situation but with the three different subs going to different companies/consortia. If the Japanese, NN, whoever else - Sibanye? CITIC? - all have fingers in one or more of the pies in some way, then it stands to reason there are plenty of leakage points that could burst during the time required to choreograph the final row of ducks before dropping the big news.

International aviation is not remotely comparable to divestment of Russian mining assets owned by Russian subsidiaries to buyers that (we believe) include Russian buyers. The situation with aviation is that the west essentially closed its airspace to Russian airlines and international airlines stopped serving Russia. It's no surprise that the response was to grab hold of the planes on the ground. Equally, you can be fairly certain that, should things start to open up again, this will be a useful bargaining chip for the Kremlin to see sanctions on aviation get wound back. Simply expropriating all of Eurasia's licenses is unlikely in the extreme, for all the reasons noted in my earlier post. It would decimate junior exploration in the country and see whoever gains tied up in western courts for years, the last thing they would want when, presumably, they have myriad other interests that require access (or will require it) to western markets.

@Hector, cheers! One thing to add, which is a point I made last year when the green ghouls were making similar noises, is that it seems to have occurred to nobody just what an important advertisement Eurasia is *for* the Russian government and its mining sector. Why else would Rosgeo have cut them in on such a potentially lucrative deal? Why else would they keep getting licences? On the one hand, it's because they're excellent at what they do, and they've been working the ground at Kola, especially, when nobody else was interested, to unlock value. But, on the other, what an image for Russia to display to the rest of the world: "look look, here's a small company that came here, worked hard, spent two decades building things up, and now they've absolutely hit the jackpot, which you could too if you invest here". Obviously that message would have been a bit more powerful and persuasive had the war not happened, but, equally, it will be even more important for Russia as it searches for investors once the war subsides (and, perhaps, Putinism falls out of favour).

The botflies are getting desperate now.

1. The bill hasn't been scheduled for hearing.

2. There's no knowledge of how it might be deployed if it is.

3. It's obviously just sabre-rattling and providing a theoretical mechanism for Russia to do something *if* the west moves beyond sanctions to expropriating assets of Russians, which there is absolutely no indication of them doing. If there's one thing the west believes in and has structured its entire legal systems to defend, it's business and private property. Indeed, it's fairly clear the EU and US will wind sanctions back as quickly as possible once Russia comes to the table with an acceptable negotiated solution.

4. The war has passed its high point and the sanctions have essentially plateaued.

5. Eurasia's assets are owned by *Russian* subsidiaries, so the government isn't going to expropriate its own companies.

6. Even if it were minded to - which it isn't, as the law hasn't been passed and every public pronouncement has reiterated that the Russians want the economy to proceed in an orderly fashion, including M&A activity - it probably wouldn't because the consequences would be horrendous. Once the war is over, Russia needs economic relations to normalise. It certainly doesn't need junior explorers quitting the country en masse leaving the pipeline of new projects empty, or endless lawsuits in London and New York scaring investors away and making production and sale of metals unnecessarily arduous.

7. If the BOD of Eurasia have demonstrated anything in recent years, it's that they have contacts right up to the highest levels of government, and the respect of the authorities - from the Ministry of Defence to Rosgeo via other licensing entities - for the competent work they do to explore and bring assets towards production. The Kremlin has been clear that orderly M&A activity that sees western beneficial owners respectfully exit their assets is fine. It's hardly likely that they'll attack a company, in which many of the key figures are Russian, that has been in a process of doing precisely that for over two years now.

In short, this is just another failed deramping attempt like all the others we've put up with on this board for the past few years. A variant of the glib "oooh, it's in Russia, it must be dodgy" bot attack. Get off the rigging. Get into the sea. Shipmates aboard this galleon have a palladium cannon - newly appended with hydrogen thrusters and a shiny nickel coating - to polish.

@Sandy - I said much the same yesterday. Who is more nervous: those of us long with 100,000s of shares, or those short to the tune of 1,000,000s? At least our losses -- should they come -- are limited to what we originally invested. Imagine taking a short out at 13p and not closing it at 7p when you had the chance!

“Well maybe if it is bad news they are still trying to work out the ramifications of that”.

Doubtful. The nomad and their legal advisers wouldn’t permit it. If something bad had happened they have a duty to inform the market immediately. They wouldn’t be permitted to suspend by the exchange and lock in investors simply because something has happened which could crash the share price. The longer the wait, the more and more likely it’s good news in my view. As Hector says below and I said yesterday: ignore the bots and green coffins wailing, just take a couple of hours to read the past three or four years-worth of RNSs on their own with no interference from outside noise. It’s all there in black and white.

Very exciting times. I find the lack of an RNS strangely reassuring. It implies the company are working hard and it’s good news in bound. Bad news would have had to be provided to market already. The delay to me suggests final bits of paperwork and ducks being lined up. All IMO DYOR.

"The mysterious Queeld have close to 11%from memory, could they working in concert with another party?"

It's possible in theory, but why would they work with someone else to depress the SP and generate a hostile takeover rather than swimming along with EUA towards the massive liquidity event?

"Pay up or we mine it ourselves, simple."

Absolutely. Two more things anyone worried by the FUD-spreaders should remember: (a) nobody gains anything by screwing Eurasia over, not the Russian state, not NN, nobody, as Russian needs junior explorers to do their exploring and hit the occasional jackpot if the pipeline of projects is going to continue filling itself up; (b) nobody in Russia wants to spend the next decade after the war fighting legal battles over assets that stop them coming to production or sanctions being eased off.

Funny how all the naysayers crawling out of the woodwork today are people who never post, or have rarely posted on EUA over the past few years. Not a single piece of research, evidence or analysis shared. Yet they seem to have very strong opinions about where this is going and what the terrible outcome will be.

Regardless of what the actual news is, who is more nervous right now: those of us holding hundreds of thousands of shares long, or those that are holding millions short? Based on what's happening (or not happening) down in my nether regions, I have my own view on the answer to that question.

"Some do, some don’t Montmuzard. Any companies I have been invested in haven’t suspended prior to announcing but I certainly have seen some that have"

Exactly, that was my point. The fact that some suspend and others don't implies, by definition, that we can't draw negative conclusions about this not being to do with the sale

Incidentally, one fairly common reason for suspension on Aim is because a company is "putting in place changes that can be judged a fundamental change of business".

https://aim-watch.com/project/trading-suspensions-overview/

Sounds like it could be us.

"They don't suspend trading to announce takeovers or assert sales"

Utter nonsense. Happens all the time. Just because not all sales require a suspension, it doesn't not follow that other sales do not.