IMHO, you will never know whether they hired someone or not for outside negotiations as that would be the tip off. We will not know anything until one day we get a stock halt and buyout announcement. My feeling is that those who are playing this stock and hoping it drifts below .80 may not get their wish.
A buyout can come at any time and those without shares - well too bad for them. Just look at all the signs that this is indeed taking place or getting close - new land claims, port agreement, ES appointed to the Board for Laird ( why would Teck do this when they didn't have to? ), CUU buying up more Laird shares, endless delays out of the blue, insiders in black out mode for over a month etc. etc. Something big is going down. My spider senses are tingling...