"(Hey: we should start a guess game to kill time before the next news... My bet: 50% NOT's holding in FWR by Friday night. The winner gets a "so-called warrant" of NOT)"

Barbu,

I am game. My guess is 52 % will be under the control of Noront by Friday night. I do not believe they would have gone into this without some allies. My guess is that MineralFields (who took out a lot of PPs that last couple of years) is tendering to Noront. And likely many others.

Mineralfields as mentioned in the FWR news releases is four limited partnerships associated with MineralFields Group of Toronto.

This partnership took out the $500K private placement on April 30, 2009 (@.30 cents per share) and there were no warrants. I am not sure if they were involved in the 2.3M dollar one December 31, 2008, but they have been involved with three other direct placements in 2007 and 2008. Who is MineralFields? Here is a link to their web site: http://www.mineralfields.com/

Sufficient to say that they pursue investments that provide tax savings to their clients, specifically with flow-thru tax savings. Depending on what tax implications the Cliff's deal (being a US based company) has on these investors, I am sure they will be voting to protect these interests. And tendering to Noront is the easiest way to do this.

That combined with the fact that just 45 days later Freewest issued a $5.1 dollar private placement to Cliff's directly (.35 cents) with 1/2 warrants for each share purchased (@.45 cents) and you could imagine that they might have felt a little betrayed after helping to prop up FWR for so many years.

The wildcard will always be the retail group but from an instutional point of view, I cannot see many institutional holders being big fans of Cliffs who just crashed the party late. It would not surprise me in the least if we discovered that these institutions approached Noront after the June 4, 2009 private placement to Cliffs in order to begin the planning of a coup which would see both companies combined. They likely even set the original terms of the Noront bid but did not bank on the actions Mac would take to protect himself and his handing over more shares, I mean control directly to Cliff with favorable terms.

Is this speculation? Of course. But not impossible by any means. If FWR institutional longs felt that Cliffs was gaining control of FWR, then I imagine they were looking for an exit to protect there years of patient accumulation and collective control, especially as they bore all of the risk until the chrome was discovered.

There is a lot more going on behind the scenes in my opinion. I would love to be a fly on the wall in both boardrooms.

I just cannot see Wes throwing out an offer just to see what might happen. If this was figure skating, it could be that the gold medal winner was determined long before they stepped on the ice. This is my hope.

Still why take any chances? Tender those FWR shares today, or at least sell them and buy some Noront and stay in the ROF! If may well be that those buying FWR will turnaround and tender them all the same.

M1.