RE:RE:RE:Rick Rule on ER BNN interviewRick Rule sounded like he knew ICG very well... and could have said quite a bit about ER and the relationship ICG has with ER, Here is my recollection:
- starting with being the white knight to defuse the proxy battle started by Columbus Gold to unseat the former management team with an "strategic" investment of some 9.9% which included 2 seats at the BoD and 2 Tech Advisers in ER Tech Committee. This was not merely a docile strategic investment. ICG was sent in there by somebody (G????) to take control of ER and set it on a a definite direction. de Jong and Salamis was nominated to ER BoD...and Lemasson was put in as CEO to put together a new management team.
- Several months later, ICG reduced investment to 5.1% (so that it still cab be qualified for 2 BoD members
- At the 2017 AGM, de Jong and Salamis was not on the nominated of BoD. Herv Thiboutot, VP ICG was nominated as was elected. There was no NR about de Jong and Salamis departure (usually, there would be some kind of thank you note...for their good service, blah, blah..., but zilch in this case, may be I have missed the notice?). There was no mentioning of the Tech Advisory Committee.
- Then ELD put in an offer to take over ICG (which still has 5.1% of ER). So, if ELD were sucessful in merging with ICG, then what? ELD would have 5.1% of ER and G would have something like 6%ER? That situation would not sit well with G, since that whole area (Eleonore mine, ER, Eleonore South/ SOI/Cheechoo) seem to be under the the control of the 8-arm octopus G.
Everybody seems to be tight lipped about all this relationship, including Mr. Rule. What was the real reason why he did not want to comment on the relaionship between ICG and ER, since he would be expected to know a lot more than us (at leas,t he would know more than me). May be, just may be, he is positioning himself as one of the kingmakers?
ER published a list of major shareholders (as in the April 2017 Corp Presentation/European Gold Forum, page 5 in link below.
https://www.eastmain.com/_resources/ER%20-%20EGF%20Presentation%20-%20170403.pdf
However, in the May 2017 Corp Presentation, it went into radio silence, this list is no longer presented for some reason, see link below
https://www.eastmain.com/_resources/presentations/corporate-presentation.pdf
Note: On May 17 2017, ER has a bought deal for $9M plus an extension for an additional $3.5M consiting of shares (@0.40 and FTs @ 0.68. And so far, ER has not discussed who took the largest chunks. It would be interesting to see who were the major buyers.
Just my "conspiracy" theory.
GH