re: Ann: AEL's Increased 42 cent offer fo...
For what its worth - here is the guts of my ASIC complaint: After listing the parties involved etc.
At a time when ADI is rapidly being de-risked by successful oil/gas exploration in Texas: 17/05/2010 -AWE (a major shareholder at around 33%) made an unconditional on market offer of 40c for all ADI shares. 19/05/2010 - ADI board recommend 'take no action' to shareholders. 31/05/2010 - ADI board release their target statement, valueing ADI at ~ 61c per share, and state that the AWE offer is NEITHER FAIR NOR REASONABLE. 21/06/2010 - AWE release final offer of 42c per ADI share. 21/06/2010 - ADI board release advice that AWE is likely to gain control of ADI, remove directors and apparently delist it. They recommend selling to AWE to avoid becoming minority shareholders in an AWE cintrolled Adelphi energy.
All the while - ADI's sugarloaf oil/gas prospects in Texas are showing improving results and the project is becoming more valuable week by week as it is de-risked. The takeover by AWE is opportunistic and a fine example of corporate players being allowed to 'shaft' smaller shareholders many of whom have been long term holders, researching and waiting patiently for sugarloaf to 'come good'. And now that it is absolutely clear that the prospect is going to be successful - those same small and faithful shareholders are allowed to shafted by the corporate player - AWE, who will in effect be allowed to steal the future profits of those shareholders. Part of the problem here is the very close business relationship between ADI, AWE and the former ARC energy which was the original parent company of ADI and later merged with AWE. ADI and AWE are believed to share office space and admin staff in their perth offices which opens all kinds of opportunities for inside information and collusion between the parties.
A major question that needs to be asked is why would the ADI board capitulate to an offer of 42 c per share, when they had previously stated that 40c per share was neither fair nor reasonable, and the own targets statement valued ADI at 61c per share? Another question is the reasoning of the ADI board behind the the suspiciously low priced recent capital raising of ADI (at 25c ?) - which had effectively capped the ADI share price, allowed AWE to first increase their holding at a VERY low price, and then given the opportunity to AWE to make a further very low offer of 40c per share.
All of these conflicting decisions and actions by the ADI and AWE boards seem very suspicious to me and in my opinion should be investigated by ASIC or other relevant authorities. Possible breaches would range from non-disclosure or partisan disclosure of sensitive information to not acting in the best interests of shareholders on numerous occasions, to potential corporate fraud. - regards..blahblah
... not that i expect it will have any effect what-so-ever.
ADI Price at posting:
42.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held