You look at a company such as PNA. Garry Stafford their MD got...

You look at a company such as PNA. Garry Stafford their MD got PNA up and running in the days where copper was around 2.10 - 2.40 a pound. Sure, banks were dishing out coin like lollies in those days so that helped. However, URL was trying to get things going when copper was around 3.30 to 3.50 a pound and the banks were still in the frenzy mode of dishing out cash freely. This lasted for a good 18 months before the crash - so there was plenty of time.

Ok, so URL had better economics at the time.

Now lets look at the resources. PNA after gold credits has an average of around 0.70% copper grade compared to URL at about 0.69% - bearing in mind PNA has cheaper operating costs - but not significantly. Furthermore, PNA operates in Laos which would certainly have significantly more sovereing risk that Australia - the bullet proof economy that no recession can currently touch.

We can argue all day about why PNA might have better resources - but taking into account different factors - I believe that PNA had similar difficulties to URL - the point being is that PNA pulled it off - URL did not.

Is this due to management or the resources? Ask yourself that question and then judge management accordingly. I believe mangement have not done their jobs and failed us - I would be wiling to bet if Garry Stafford were the one running URL - this would have taken off and we would be in a very different position.