Acquisitions?, page-23

They entertained bids for the whole of NHC - that was when the sp was travelling around $4.50 to $5.00 they disclosed the offers were not good enough - however the rumour mill said that the offers were north of $3.50 some even said the low $4.00 but it appeared they wanted a premium.

The Coal to Gas and liquids has cost around $20 million if you take the operating expenses as well as the Investments and Bridgeport offer to purchase was around $76 million and then they had to drill holes - again operating just goes through as a loss but I would estimate that its around $100 million.

Whilst I understand its not large in the scheme of things its a culture thats great at operations but not really in asset management in my opinion. Had they not made a killing in the Surat find and subsequent sale would it be a great company - I think not. They would have been better served to pay the dividend and seen where too from there.

two more brokers are calling the price of the RIO asset as "Full Price" - I dont think that justified especially as 40% does not buy you operating rights and they may well get knocked back on that part of the bid and really then they are just JV profit takers.

As regards Mr J - he knows everything in my opinion so its useless trying to get him to stick to the knitting - whatever he thinks is his knitting. Its strange that I prefer the labour half of the duo and would prefer to listen to him any day.

You have to judge management on performance - We invest to make money. The Acland expansion should have been applied for a decade ago - mine lives around 25 years are great so when this was 2005 they should have had it fully applied for by 2009 the country would have begged them to go ahead and they could have just moved right along.

I put money into the business to get a return - we all saw the train-smash coming when they went outside to get a bid - we had doubts about coal markets - they must have as well - I sold around 50% of my holding then and a further 30% in a dribble down process but really if I had held throughout I would be very unhappy.

Really I supported management of SOL against the PPT attack - I wont again , I do think they put all of us on ignore. SOL is where you expect asset management not at this level.