First of all I would like to say a warm and hearty HELLO to all the AUM shareholders who may have decided to peak around our board, curious to our collective thoughts on joining you in Newco. I for one am very pleased with this merger and believe that you should also be pleased as ECU has some killer projects, excellent prospects, some top class strong hand investors and the best mining board on the planet (just check out some of our class posters here).

Next I would like to pass on my humble thoughts on the past few days. I have to say that I am quite disappointed in a few of my fellow, loyal posters/investors on this site who I have nearly always agreed with and I have (and still have) great respect for. While we all have positive and negative thoughts when such a major upheaval comes, one should always look for the opportunities in change. We have trusted our respected companies up till now, why would we change? Do we really believe that our respective boards have done this in self interest against the best interest of the loyal shareholders? The only 'self interest' I see is in finding a near perfect match for one another and having the brass b@lls to go for a proper 50/50 merger.

What has disappointed me is the unusual knee jerk (dare I say 'ranting immaturity') reaction of some posters & the unbelievable lack of simple maths by others. Even worse has been some of the suspicion I've seen where good loyal posters have actually questioned the motives and honesty/integrity of other loyal posters. Hey guys, we haven't all always gotten along- BUT almost to a man/woman, this board has largely been logical & a place where real discussions took place on many different and diverse topics. I cannot think of a single poster amongst the key people here that I would ever mistrust enough to imagine him or her 'screwing' me out of my hard earned money. Now there have been a few 'oddities' who arrived now and again, but certainly none of those under the Hub leader category have ever made me feel they were less then integral. Hell many of them have practically given me all the knowledge I current have about the in's and outs of mining. I can only hope there are a few AUM guys out there with similar knowledge who will join in the conversation!

For those who doubt- sorry but the math is SO simple. You had 1 and another 1 and now you have 2. That's it. If the price you were seeking before was 2 bucks... it's now 40. Thinking that somehow less shares with higher value is somehow 'ripping you off' is odd. The total value of your shares is the same, you're just now in company twice as big with half the problems. If you had ECU warrants, you now have newco warrants with an adjusted 'number of', and an equally adjusted 'strike price' and 'value'. There is no magic here. It's like all the nations of Europe when the switched to the Euro, the end result that night of the change was their value didn't change. I remember going to the bank machine in France at 12:01 and pulling out my Euros - within a week everyone was used to it and suspicions died. They just had way more people, way more workers, way more... wait a minute, bad example - we're not inheriting Italy or Greece :)

Anyhow, this is the main point:

We were a company with a big, big, big potential and a very frightening issue with financial instability. Who knows how that would have played out? We might have had a massive increase in resources, but then have to had a massive dilution of an already diluted share pool and fall into a spiral over our existing debt just to expand. Perhaps we would have been taken over? Perhaps we would have found a JV partner? Maybe bought out all together? Whatever was going to happen, it was VERY unlikely we would have progressed to become a big producer on our own.

What did happen is that we found a partner company with cash in it's pocket. Get this... despite all the great property they have, they have 100 million in cash. So 33% of their value is FIAT, but heck we NEED FIAT to get to the real value under ground. In fact, since I'm on a board with a huge number of guys who constantly bash FIAT, why are you not looking at this like - We now have potentially 2 billion ounce of silver under the ground AND CAN GET TO IT! Wow! Yes!

Personally, my love for the deal was immediate (as you probably noticed) as I tend to think slightly more risk adverse then some of you - but the more I read and research AUM, the more I think this was nearly the perfect escalation for this great story. A 50/50 merger with this company is nearly the best scenario I could have hope for. When the dust settles, we're not little any more folks... more volume, a nice shot squeeze, more interest, bigger potential, better financials, less shares in issue, more strong hands, less vulnerable and from my perspective just as much upside as ever before. I think the newco is going to 60 bucks and quick. Doubt me? I said the same to my buddies when they laughed at my buying Apple shares at 120. Don't bother looking - that company which was 'so big' and 'had peaked' is nearly triple that now. Imagine, nearly 350 bucks a share! trust me, no Apple investors complain that it wasn't 1 buck a share that went to 3.

In conclusion - welcome all- the future is bright, bright, bright. I personally can't wait to vote & swap my shares. I'm going to be all pins and needles seeing what the newco will do first. Drill the F'outta the properties with the best potential is my guess. Their cash and our exploration expertise. Match made in heaven.

Over and out

Soul.

P.S. don't even bother thinking I'm some kind of company insider, if you PM me I can PROVE who I am and where I live. I'm in Zurich and have never once called the ECU board or spoken to even one insider. I just like a good company when I see one... I was leaning towards leaving but now I'm in and in FIRM.