Hi all. Very intriguing. Caldwell and his Guyana Gold have not...

Hi all.

Very intriguing.

Caldwell and his Guyana Gold have not been comfortable with the BoD for a while....they abstained from the original Newcrest vote. His recent Director resignation announcement was about as unfriendly as it gets so its pretty safe to say he parted quickly and not on good terms. But no one leaves a Board just because friendship status....especially if you have a material position. You leave because of an actual/pending conflict.

So Caldwell and Guyana are now free to deal with their 125m SOLG shares...this is 8.27% of the new capital and is now the biggest 'loose' block. I would think we'll soon see what he intends to do with this.

Will he join fellow Maxit Capital placee, Rosseau in flipping his SOLG into Cornerstone for 'free' uplift in effective Cascabell ownership? Or is he negotiating with a new party who wants to position themselves near the front of the queue?

Either way, any corporate player will certainly have an immense battle on their hands with the DGR/Tenstar/NM/management holding 29.9% or 452.1m shares (though I believe 3-5 mill of these may have been sold in the past 2 months (DGR's 13.5% equates to 204m shares meaning some 3.3m may have been recently flicked)).

But Cornerstone. Wow! What a bold move swapping their shares for 5.18% of SOLG. Why would a junior, relative cash-starved explorer take a C$50m minority position behind NCM with 14.54% and NM's group with 29.9%? It certainly gives them a starting point to get to >10% necessary for negotiating leverage....but they are not there yet.

But Cornerstone wouldn't do this if they felt that C$50m was just going to sit there impotently for a year or two. Something is expected to happen (read = monetise it) within the next 6 months methinks.

So is this where Caldwell's 8.27% comes in? Possibly. Warren Irwin of Rosseau (and now Cornerstone's largest shareholder) knows and has dealt with Guyana Gold/Caldwell before (in backing GPM whose CEO is ex Guyana)

There's also Maxit Capital and a few other Canadian HNW's who speak for about 119m SOLG (7.89%) who, one would think, would be more inclined to pitch in with any Canadian contender in a battle Vs NM Vs NCM Vs ??

Any way you look at it, players are now picking and boosting their corners for the pending showdown.

In a normal world, this would play out fairly predictably. But NM has an insane habit of throwing surprise curve balls at the last minute. Just wait for it....it may give your corporate ethics a nudge...but it will be worthwhile watching from the DGR pilot seat.

Cheers,