Ann: Announcement of buy-back - Appendix 3C, page-10

The buyback has clearly been launched to steady the share price. It's pretty normal to see it in troubled companies and ALF is no different. The discount to NTA argument isn't entirely valid for two reasons in this case. The first option is that it assumes you have a fund manager running the show who will liquidate the LIC and return all capital to shareholders and therefore realise the valuation gap between the share price and NTA. The second option is that you have a fund manager managing the LIC who will create enough value on a consistent basis that shareholders will start to give the fund manager credit for being able to create value and therefore the share price will move up towards the NTA. Unfortunately neither of these outcomes are likely - Justin will never give us our capital back entirely and evidence to date shows that he can't make money without the staff he lost. I honestly think the best outcome is for someone like Geoff Wilson to mop up this mess or call a shareholder meeting so that we can boot out Justin and his band of fools.