RE:RE:RE:RE:Something good could come out of lower VALUES !Hi Marine, I'll give you that one could interpret the situation as RIO having some "form of control" to a certain extent. Clearly, WRN is not totally virgin territory to any of the majors as we have two with minor positions now. But, that is the key word: minor (i. e. less than 10%). At any moment RIO could up their stake or so could any other major via open market purchases and things will get a bit more crowded. As of now, nobody really controls WRN, including management, retail, the HNWs or the two majors.
On one hand, this makes me a bit nervous as I would prefer a whale (Sprott, Kaplan, etc.) who has taken a double-digit stake in the company. On the other hand, this means that control is completely open for any entity at this very moment to take a double digit stake in WRN. RIO/Mitsubishi have lent us credibility with their investments, but the game is wide open for any and all comers at this juncture.
Did RIO preclude Mitsubishi from coming on board? We all know that Paul is rolling out the red carpet for others to cozy up to him by keeping RIO's owernship percentage minor.
I don't want to keep recycling my old analogies about EBay, but I think they are very apropo: RIO has in effect placed a couple of bids on an item up for auction. Yes, they are "in the lead" at the moment, but we all know the heavy action for these items on Ebay occur in the last couple of minutes before the clock expires. You will have bidders who will wait until the very end to place bids once they understand where the price is going to settle at.
It always works that way, slow action until fireworks near the end. It feels like RIO may be in control, but they are just the ones out front as of today's date. We don't know how this story ends, but my belief is that whomever lands Casino is going to pay up - it is too rare of an asset globally to be had for a pittance.