Apex Silver borrowed a lot of money to fund development at San Cristobal. They were unable to continue funding all of that debt obligation and went into bankruptcy. The bond holders were prefered creditors and had first claim on the assets of the company, which included the share of the mine plus all of the great exploration projects. The mine interest was sold off, the money paid down the bond holders, but there was no market to get fair value in liquidation of all the great properties. So these were rolled into a new company, and the former Apex bond holders were granted shares in the company, reorganized as Golden Minerals, with some fresh management. This happened during the meltdown in 2008, and the new AUM has been a winner, as it can operate now with the same great projects, but as a newly created company it has a tight share structure and access to cash.

Looking into the financial statements there is still some leverage to another former Apex project in the La Platosa mine run by Excellon. AUM gets a 2% NSR from that operation, so there is recurring income. Also, we have some properties that were vended to Apogee and AUM got paid in 5 million shares of Apogee that can be sold in the market for cash. This is on top of the money in the bank, and the current exploration assets controlled by AUM.

Now we can include the hundreds of million ounces of silver plus other metals from Velardena, and the potential income from operations that will come with the injection of fresh money into the mill and underground operations to get that entire project running properly.

I think all of this will have the analysts predicting a much higher value for the Newco, and AUM stock will rise. ECU will trade at a relationship of 1:20 so if AUM rises, so too will ECU through the arbitrage. And if ECU is successful in the drilling work, the stock will rise, and so too will AUM on a 1:20 basis as well.

cheers!

mike