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Buy the rumour!

So Alpala NPV is reduced because they found EVEN more metal right next door? Can that be right? Is Alpala becoming the gift that keeps on taking away lol

If you invested in GGP at 3p in Jan 2011, you'd have had to wait until Jan this year to get your money back though wouldn't you?

A stock that's up over 1,900% in a year just doesn't scream "buy" to me... Maybe this is why I'm just some schmuck in my home office posting on an internet message board, and not running my own hedge fund from a yacht in Monaco. But looks like there's a lot of good news and high expectations priced into that already.

Big Wazza never backs up his statements with examples... He makes comments about NM but when you press him for detail he always seems to say "if you worked with him, you'd know" or "I think it's obvious and that's all I can say" etc.

He's openly criticising NM and his "lame duck" board, then spell out why, and explain what he would have done differently.

It is not correct that all of those companies have "deserted" Britain because of Brexit. I work for one of the companies you have listed there and I can assure you that we remain very much in the UK. It is correct that some roles have re-located to Europe and our principal EU office has been expanded with several hundred staff. The model is that EU clients will face the EU entity based in Europe. All other global clients ex-US and ex-EU continue to face the UK entity.

Many other companies on that list have simply opened or beefed up their EU branches so as to cover both EU and non-EU business.

There are other glaring errors on that list as well. It is ridiculous to think that Lloyds of London would have deserted the UK, it's a global insurance market and remains located in London. Unilever was a dual UK and Dutch headquartered company and has just in the last couple of months completed its transition to a single domiciled entity in the UK, literally the opposite of what that list implies. Jaguar Land Rover continues to be based in the West Midlands... Etc etc.

And silver up over 5%! US just agreed $900bn stimulus and the way the virus is going there's bound to be more coming next year.

Maybe not worth wasting too much time on this but there's still a few things I can't quite square in my head.

If Solg knew that BHP might vote against NM, why did they leave the AGM til December? As iceberg (I think) has said several times, why not call it before the lock in expired if they were worried about BHP? Last year's was in September.

So does that mean they were fairly certain BHP would remain onside after the standstill ended? If so, why the concerted effort to drum up PI support, which was going on for weeks before the AGM. Suggests they knew then BHP might vote against NM.

But if BHP did want NM gone and more control over the company, why not exercise their options, as several have said already. Would give them that extra push over the line in the vote. And 37p is barely a premium to current share price, unlike 4 months ago when the SP was 10p power.

So were BHP just intending to put a shot across NM's bow but didn't really want him gone? If so they were close to holing him below the waterline... If it hadn't been for the outreach the vote could definitely have gone the other way.

Hard to square exactly what went on and who knew what and when.

That 7m buy in GGP was the GDXJ buying another tranche I believe.

Also the covid situation in Australia and Ecuador completely different. Ecuador in a state of emergency for most of the year, absolutely hammered by covid. Plus lots of restrictions on movement which has hampered Solg's operations. Australia has been much less affected, they've only had 28,000 cases.

Iceberg yes agreed and I see your point. But just wanted to be clear that what the BoD can't do is exclude the major holders completely or force them to be diluted down if they are intent on taking up their rights.

Hi Quady that's what the first special resolution was to give authority for, issuing 5% without pre-emption. The other special was for an additional 5% for the purposes of an acquisition or capital investment. Both were withdrawn (i.e. defeated on votes cast prior to the meeting). Therefore I don't think the BoD has even that 5% to play with now.

Yes but in order to disapply the statutory pre-emption rights you need a special resolution, which requires a 75% majority. So even if they called an EGM, the 26% that BHP and NCM already hold is enough to vote down any special resolution.

Quady - "NM and the BOD can fix this by not offering any further shares to BHP, NCM and CGP."

I still don't see how they can do that because they now have no authority to issue shares without pre-emption rights. If they want to offer a block of new shares in order to bring another institutional holder on-board then they have to give BHP and NCM the right to participate in proportion to their holdings. I realise BHP and NCM may decline to do so, but if they do take up those rights then they will remain with their current percentages, they will not be diluted down. The end result would be that the rest of us who didn't or couldn't subscribe for new shares would be the ones being diluted, not BHP and NCM.

You mentioned the Valuestone placing. The BoD had the authority to issue up to 15% of the total without pre-emption rights from the 2019 AGM. That is how they could do the placing with Valuestone without also offering to all existing holders pre-emptively. That authority has now expired, and with the specials being withdrawn there is no new authority to disapply pre-emption.

I know you will say I'm looking at this only from the legal point of view, but that is the law. Anyone saying that NM is going to dilute NCM and BHP into Kingdom Come is ignoring the shareholder rights that the existing holders are entitled to.

The reason I would not discount NM's owned/controlled 20% from the vote tally is that he probably would not have made the choices he did if he didn't know he had that substantial block of votes to build from.

When he signed the FNV deal he would have known full well that it would probably put NCM's and BHP's noses out of joint. He also knew that the BHP standstill agreement was coming to an end. Therefore he must have calculated that it was a gamble worth taking to rub the two largest external shareholders up the wrong way, particularly on the back of the hostile CGP bid which always had a strong chance of failing, which would add CGP's votes against him.

If he didn't effectively control 20% of the voting rights, would he have taken such a gamble? Maybe not. But you can't test the counterfactual. The fact is, he can command 20%, and he voted it accordingly having taken actions this year that were bound to incur the displeasure of at least one major shareholder and possibly more.

Red - are you saying that the Lassonde curve is pure fiction, or are you saying that NM has to go because he doesn't have the ability to run a junior mining company that is somehow exempt from the realities of what the Lassonde curve implies.

Z, what's the Porvenir fiasco? They've only just begun drilling it. What does it take to fully prove up a Tier 1 asset? Tens of thousands of metres of drilling? And several years. Anyway the SP was drifting along around the 25p level before Porv news came out. Now it's hovering around the 35p level, that's a 40% increase. Not bad after 2 and a half holes.

I think GGP is blinding people to reality. GGP is a unique and particularly set of circumstances. It's right next door to Telfer, that is a complete game changer for them that you can't expect every other explorer with a decent asset to be able to copy.

If you strike at a king, you must kill him...

Hopefully we will get some clarity soon, after yesterday's assassination attempt. Will the majors now attempt to finish NM off, with a bid? Or will NM purge his enemies by revealing the route forward that excludes BHP and NCM from the operation of the mines?

Resos 12 and 13 in 2019 were special resolutions that were passed.

Question to those saying NM's position is now untenable: would you have preferred that he didn't do the FNV deal, and had funded Alpala through to FS by way of a 20-25% dilutive equity raise to BHP and NCM? Because that seems to be the key reason why they are unhappy with him and why they voted against.

Red, an alternative view would be that NM owns or controls 20% of the company, so of course he gets a large say in who runs it (i.e. him). You can't just discount his votes. On the one hand people complain when management don't have skin in the game, on the other they complain when management has lots of skin in the game which gives them more control over the company.

Speaking of corporate governance and private fiefdoms, look how all the current tech giant darlings of the stockmarket in the US are run... dual shareclass structures and the founders can sell vast amounts of stock to the public market but not give away control. Zuck has an iron grip on FB, which is fine when everyone's making money but not so good when everyone's worried about political influence etc.