RE: Tree and EH1..... First Tony, lets make a few assumptions. TGZ and IMG are the only people interested in OLE, which isn't a stretch in itself. By taking out OLE first, you are committing to 300M in cap. costs. Sure, you could argue that TGZ would be next but who is to say that management or shareholders even want a buyout. You have to remember that this management team were the ones to spearhead the spinoff of TGZ from MDM. I think they will be around for a while and a buyout at this juncture is not part of the plan, not to say that it won't be an option down the road. Also, what if the buyout number is low. A lot of investors came in at an IPO of $3.00. The play here Tony would be to try and take out TGZ first which allows for immediate production and profits then make OLE wait. Not a good scenario for OLE shareholders like myself. Just my opinion.
Again, I don't think this is likely and maybe you misunderstood what I got out of the IMG interview. Mali is an ongoing issue not only in terms of high production costs and stagnant gold prices ("clear and present danger across the board") but also a partner who appears to want out. This in itself is probably enough of a problem because the AngloGold Ashanti shoes will be hard to fill and IMG admittedly acknowledges they can't do it on their own. We hear the catch phrases "we have people who are interested", sound familiar. They also plan to almost double production within the next four years but that is driven by their Quebec projects which I assume will cost a bit of money. Letwin himself is not very popular right now with the recent loss of almost half of their market cap.. Yes you could argue, all the more reason to go after OLE. Hey, who knows. Certainly not anyone on this board. As a qualification, I am also an IMG shareholder.
To borrow an observation from Treetop, TGZ will be the benchmark by which OLE will be evaluated so a strong TGZ share price can't hurt OLE. We may differ on our respective valuations and we all have different agendas for investing here but I think most can agree that the long term shareholder value would be from these two getting together. Maybe the RBC take of TGZ only doing a deal with OLE was an olive branch to Chet to start discussions again. Here's to hoping.