MINCO gold and silver explorer.... the facts

As far as funding etc is concerned: as Laguna is not, in the ordinary usage of the term, an exploration project but more a mining and refining project (assays provide ample assurance of this), funding is more a matter of negotiating terms, not of if but when, and at what cost, including possible dilution.

Not being a mining engineer nor a financier (I am by trade art historian) I have had to take and accept in good faith the company's meticulously drawn-up plans for engineering feasability studies, banking feas. studies, etc, and the long rounds of negotiations with backers, brokers, etc... while hoping they would get on with engineering at the bread-and-butter Laguna.

The fact that the Laguna asset is modest but certain makes it, IMO, the perfect surity for a simple loan with minimum, if any, fancy footwork re options, participation (on the part of the lender) buy-ins, buy-outs, and the like. A LOAN, AS IN LOAN?! Yes? No? As before, I have suppressed my simple-minded approach to these matters as being (as I imagined) necessarily less canny and careful than the approach of the MIO directors.

However, I have now built up an impressive portfolio of 3 (three) fundamental misgivings, each experienced over the last year or two, each suppressed (by me) at the time I conceived them, and each pooh-poohed, when others were courageous enough to raise them, by various interested parties (including sometimes, but not always, MIO people) - and each turning out, eventually, to be correct:

1: That Roger T was a dirty-hands miner of the old school, and that his approach was preferable, for a project of this kind, to anything too sleek, slick, or MBA-ish; that there was therefore an inherant internal conflict in MIO's culture; and that his influence, approach and philosophy should guide the company, both in long-run and in day-to-day matters

2: That Vodorozdelnoye (sp?) and Pallas were distractions from what should be MIO priorities namely, in Miss World order, M Sisa and Laguna. (Here I was only half-right: Pallas remains a distraction, but assays, finds and developments there are promising. I am vindicated on Vodor, though, and I think on the general principle.)

3: That fretting and fussing about terms for the financing of Laguna may be missing the point. Enthuse too much and the bankers will want to buy in, costing equity, options, or some other form of participation. Be too downbeat and they won't lend. It is possible, in these situations, to be too clever by half. A dull, plodding, home-loan approach is what is needed: "Yes, it's a sound if not glamourous property - a small semi in Slough - and no, thank you, I don't want you to move in with me. Just give me the loan, please." Assay results should be sufficient to persuade any decent banker to cough up, with a small loading for risk, if nec. Some presales of silver would also help to fend off any over-amourous would-be participants.

Of these three gut instincts, all but the last are now crying over spilt milk. I should have spoken up. (In a small way, and not very articulately, I did a little bit, but without following things up as I should have.)

On the last point, however, I now feel emboldened to press the issue. My feeling is that recent corporate changes might see the directors, particularly Roger T, adopting this approach, more High Street than Wall Street, to the simple issue of buying a few machines and getting in some heavy lifters working in Laguna.

Good thing is, Roger is actually INTERESTED in heavy lifting, and does not consider it beneath him.

Meanwhile I am, as they say, Still a Believer.

Regards to all die-hard fans.

- obsignal

(P.S.: Thanks to gowise for deploying his trusty flame-retardant device...)