Zooloo, you write,

"I'm not convinced that the membership in the Chromium Consortium is all it's baked up to be. Cliff's on the other hand has the North American steel industry pretty well sewed up and that gets them in the door with chromium. With the NA market in thier pocket how long do you think it would take them to become a member of the Chromium Consortium.

You may be right though about the membership starting this "pissing match" as I still think it started a la xtrata."

A possible senario here of course is some or all of the Chromium Consortium would not want Cliff's to start supplying that North American market. So if Cliffs make an offer it would be possible one or more other, and likely larger, majors would simply out bid Cliffs. Needless to say regardless of which side of this offer you are on, a bidding war for all our shares is exactly what we would all like to see.