Brentie, thanks for the detailed reply.

I can see that a rights offering could take considerable time and leave uncertainty as to how much money is raised, but they knew for a very long time that they needed to raise money.Considering that we paid a 6% commission to the underwriters to place the shares at a considerable discount, they could have done a rights offering for $1.88 to raise the same amount of money, but this is not in the interest of the underwriters.In the end, they probably could not raise nearly enough money from the existing shareholders so they still need the underwriters to raise additional cash.

I guess, from Al's perspective it does not matter, although he did pay more than the public in this offering.