performance shares, page-3

Thats only half of the performance rights that might be issued, Imcalm . And it was all voted in by shareholders at the GM in July. As reward for obtaining bridging finance, successfully completing the SPP and getting the mine back into production, the financiers (Celtic, Bergen), the Board and Senior management have been given about 780M shares ( or about 22 % of the company ) . And of course the financiers got their loans back as well. If you didn't buy into the SPP ( it appears the majority didn't ) your share holding has been diluted massively ( 1500M plus that 780M ) . Considering the number of shares now, its hard to see how long term holders who didn't have the funds to average down via the SPP will ever be able to recover their investment even if those other 117M performance rights do get vested in the future ...

FYI , from the SPP Prospectus :

Board & Senior Management Incentive Package
The Company currently has an employee performance rights plan which was approved by Shareholders on 25 November 2010. The Company will be seeking shareholder approval at the Shareholder Meeting to re-adopt this plan and to implement a non-executive performance rights to allow the Company to issue Performance Rights to non-executive Directors.
Subject to Shareholder approval at the Shareholder meeting, the Company will issue that number of Performance Rights that is equal to 10% of the amount of Shares on issue after completion of the Entitlement Offer to Messrs Michael Reed, Paul D’Sylva, Tim Morrison and Trevor Harris (Company Secretary and CFO) under the relevant performance right plan.

The Performance Rights will be apportioned equally between Messrs Michael Reed, Paul D’Sylva, Tim Morrison and Trevor Harris.
The Performance Rights will vest and convert into Shares (on the basis of 1 Share for every 1 Performance Right) subject to the following performance hurdles being met:
(a) 50% of the Performance Rights will vest and convert into Shares (on a upon completion of the Entitlement Offer;
(b) 25% of the Performance Rights will vest and convert into Shares upon the Company first achieving production of 100,000oz of silver in a 1 month period; and
(c) 25% of the Performance Rights will vest and convert into Shares upon the Company first achieving production of 500,000oz of silver in any 6 month period.
The Performance Rights are being issued as a non cash performance incentive for each of Messrs Reed, D’Sylva, Morrison and Harris.