Fantamos,
With all due respect, I do not believe a lot of people have considered the situation that we were forced to be in as positive. It is just that the outcome, according to the existing NOT management team is a little more balanced than what was threatening to occur.
I do not believe Richard would have stepped down peacefully as is being planned tomorrow if he did not believe that doing so as part of a compromise board selection had value. While we have some suspicious characters on the board, there were also a few others that were likely selected based on non-Rosseau desires. Whether Richard or Eric Sprott made the selection will likely never be known. The key is that management publicly stated that:
"In the view of the current Board and management of Noront, as well as Rosseau, the new Board will be well positioned to take Noront forward into the future drawing on considerable new industry expertise. The new Board will also ensure that Noront's future is pursued in a balanced manner in the interests of all shareholders.
In order to achieve this compromise and to facilitate a resolution that is in the best interests of all Noront's shareholders, Noront's current President and Chief Executive Officer, Richard Nemis, has agreed to stand down as President, CEO and director on October 28, 2008."
If Richard did not believe that his graceful exit would not amount to a hill of beans in terms of our protection, then I believe he would have left with a "guns blazing, security please escort this man to the exit, not while there is still life in these hands" type of exit.
If not for anything else than his final show of support for the retail shareholders and the massive effort put forth in supporting him the past three weeks.
While time will show what this compromise really means for us, I will trust Richard till the end (which happens to be tomorrow) as much as I trusted him at the beginning. If he felt this was in the best interest (under the circumstances) for us then that is all I have to go with.
As Noront released that NR today, I have to take the quote above for what it is worth.
What I am interested in learning now is the status of IBK and Agoracom given their strong support of the white proxy during the battle. I also wonder what will become of Harvey and Novak who are both still on the payroll. These would be my two questions for the AGM tomorrow.
M1.