i'm starting to think patrick and the board cooked up the worst possible deal imaginable, just to make sure there was no way it could be accepted.

the kinross offer reminds me of that play, "the producers" where they set out to produce a flop on broadway by choosing the worst play, the worst actors, the worst director, the worst singers and dancers, etc.

if you wanted to put aurelian in play, but you didn't want another suitor who came along with a real bid to have to eat the $42 million break-up fee, you would contrive to structure a deal that was too bad to be true.

you would make the offer in the summer when gold is at its lowest price, when aurelian's share price has been manipulated downward, and you'd have to do it before the new mining law came out and removed all of the political risk.

if kinross had made a realistic offer, the big gold companies couldn't afford to wait for it to fail. if there was any risk that kinross might succeed, they would have to jump in, and pay the $42 million fee to keep kinross from walking off with the prize. but if kinross makes an offer so preposterous that no one in his right mind would tender his shares, the other companies would have some urgency to move, but they could still afford to wait until after september 3.

with 30% of the stock owned by retail shareholders, 10% by keith barron, and at least 5% by sprott, it looks like kinross would have to run the table and pick up just about everything else to get to 50.1%. i think that's impossible, but then again, in the movie, the broadway play became a smash hit, and all of the producers went to prison.