I would disregard newspapers,, most of them are...

I would disregard newspapers,, most of them are sensationalist...even the ones in Aus.

I would suggest to look only at fundamentals...india needs a lot of coal, since their baseload is priamrily thermal coal....electricity shutdowns are common in the country, every hour you get a fluctuations in the lights suggesting inverters have come on/off....with a 1.3 billion set of people, the generation options are extremely limited and coal plant infrastructure set up already...Aus has just rescinded the uranium ban so uranium will provide some baseload, but will take yonks to build the power plants....i read somewhere that they are planning to have 40% baseload from uranium (just like the french), which would mean a lot of nuclear reactors to build (much more than French),,,so what do you do? do you build the reactors and get them operational in 20 years time or do you have a stop gap arrangement with coal and buy NHC out and have assured supply for 20 years to run a thermal plant???

The thing is companies are going for vertical integration, right from mining to power generation from coal in india....there are cases for and against vertical integration,,, but in india they are doing that...so some companies will eventually look for coal resources..plus Aus coal is destined mostly for eastern Asian bloc (from the RIOs and BHP), hence India is looking for Coal in Africa and Aust....

and its a big game,,,RIO and BHP might just want the asset from sheer price control manoevre,,, or multiple parties in india will want coal from vertical integration point of view and supplying downstream (especaiilly witha setup infra and noithing to do) , but in short ACLAND should be sold for a higher price at what its currently treading....