the privateer - I think that our thoughts on this situation now...

the privateer - I think that our thoughts on this situation now are now pretty much aligned.

I suppose there are just a few additional remarks I can make:

1. Re your comment that my views did not necessarily "ring true" regarding the choices faced by an opthalmologist. Here - I have two data points. The first is a relatively unambitious and not super-specialised opthalmologist who is 37yo and living on the north shore of sydney. He is very happy working for VGH because he makes $250-300k while living a very low stress life. This works for him. The second is my brother, who is a 39yo retinal surgeon who just finished a 3 year fellowship at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. When he was considering moving back to Australia, VGH were crying out for a retinal surgeon (apparently they don't grow on trees). They simply couldn't find anyone domestically in that area who wanted to work for them due to the financial tradeoffs involved and ended up having to sponsor a doctor from offshore to come and work for them, claiming a skills shortage in Australia. At this time I discussed the overall VGH / own practice dynamic with my brother and he satisfied me that the burden of funding the capital cost of an opthalmic practice is not that great - at that time getting finance was easy (I don't know whether the credit crunch has changed that at all) and setting up a practice worked just fine if you were in a group of, say, six opthalmologists.

2)re your point that this was "never a capital growth story". To a large part this may have been true in the post-listing environment. However, if you go back to the stage when it was owned by private equity, and when valuations would have been much lower for internal equity allocations, then you possibly find a bunch of doctors who thought that they were going to make $5 million + from their equity participation. If the share price had stayed elevated, I am sure that these expecatations would have been delivered on.