They haven't cared about the rules/laws so far.
AVZ Discussion 2022
- Thread starter GazDix
- Start date
LOCKY82
Regular
Well that's depressed me for the evening.
Penskefile
Regular
Riddle me this - if the DRC government cannot follow its own fucking laws (unless it suits their Chinese masters) how the fuck will a non-legally binding MOU be enforced?
Unless there is a rock-solid legally binding agreement to re-issue the ML on a set date, it should be a case of see you at the ICCSID mofos
Unless there is a rock-solid legally binding agreement to re-issue the ML on a set date, it should be a case of see you at the ICCSID mofos
At least a binding MoU should provide a clear pathway of what is required for a PE to be delivered. Following the required steps should provide us with further ammunition in the case of DRC non-compliance to support our ICSID case and perhaps pressure a resolution once the legal eagles advise the authorities of the likely outcome of that award. Sure it's not the simple issuance of the licence that we desire or that the law and Mining Code call for, but I still view it as a step in the right direction. A failure to produce a signed MoU after all this, on the other hand, is a reasonable indicator that the government intends to give us a solid rat-fucking.
MoneyBags1348
Top 20
Well a big thanks to @9cardomaha for what looks like the only sensible post on this page of the discussion thread today
Fuck me, how many fucken uninformed opinions and speculation can you shareholders fit on a page
My two bobs worth says Zijin know they are fucked and are trying to save face by carrying on this work, and its Cominiere who are the ones trying to convince everyone it’s Zijin’s tenement and power plant
But you lot keep projecting your fears, doubts and speculation by all means, as for me I’ll be saving this page to bring it up again and see who’s right.
Don't bother replying, I'll be signing off again until the time comes I have to read so much negativity, doubt and bullshit that I have to force myself to fucken say something again. Now I'll have to look for something to leave you lot with....
Ah yes….
Fuck me, how many fucken uninformed opinions and speculation can you shareholders fit on a page
My two bobs worth says Zijin know they are fucked and are trying to save face by carrying on this work, and its Cominiere who are the ones trying to convince everyone it’s Zijin’s tenement and power plant
But you lot keep projecting your fears, doubts and speculation by all means, as for me I’ll be saving this page to bring it up again and see who’s right.
Don't bother replying, I'll be signing off again until the time comes I have to read so much negativity, doubt and bullshit that I have to force myself to fucken say something again. Now I'll have to look for something to leave you lot with....
Ah yes….
Last edited:
So removing Zijin from our lease is going to be a piece of cake?
My understanding is the arseholes invade leases all the time.
They just going to pack up their shit and stroll off into the sunset?
My point has nothing to so with whether we get the ML legally recognised or not, or whether they should be there.
I don't know what the go is with removing them.
MoneyBags1348
Top 20
Just save this page Hudnut, and we’ll compare notes about Zijin when the time comes…. Now I’m going
Just save this page Hudnut, and we’ll compare notes about Zijin when the time comes…. Now I’m going
Who was that masked pidgeon?
Spikerama
Regular
Winenut
Go AVZ!
Might choose to come and go from the TSE forum but the sheer volume of material and incredible investigative intel posted over so many AVZ threads speaks absolute volumes for the contribution from Bags in the fight for Manono and AVZ shareholders IMO
Right up there with 9Card and Carlos keeping us informed for me
And just for the cherry on top has a fucking sense of humour!!!
What's that
shit!!!!
Right up there with 9Card and Carlos keeping us informed for me
And just for the cherry on top has a fucking sense of humour!!!
What's that
shit!!!! The black belt baldheaded midget nutcracker strikes again!! Yeehaa!
I totally agree with you Winenut. There are several others that contribute to this page with fantastic knowledge and research abilities that I don't have. All of these people have helped me to better understand what is happening with AVZ and my investment. I thank all of them for their efforts and contributions. I have learnt a lot from finding this forum.Might choose to come and go from the TSE forum but the sheer volume of material and incredible investigative intel posted over so many AVZ threads speaks absolute volumes for the contribution from Bags in the fight for Manono and AVZ shareholders IMO
Right up there with 9Card and Carlos keeping us informed for me
And just for the cherry on top has a fucking sense of humour!!!
What's that
I would also like to thank everyone for teaching me new swearwords some examples are,
Shitfuckery
Fucktards
MMGAGOTS
Carrot dick
CKKUNT
Peter H (can't remember how to spell his last name)
Fat tards
Zijin
Felix
China
Nellie17
Regular
Like him or loathe him, whether he's 6ft 6inches or 5ft 2inches tall, what MoneyMight choose to come and go from the TSE forum but the sheer volume of material and incredible investigative intel posted over so many AVZ threads speaks absolute volumes for the contribution from Bags in the fight for Manono and AVZ shareholders IMO
Right up there with 9Card and Carlos keeping us informed for me
And just for the cherry on top has a fucking sense of humour!!!
What's that
has dug up and posted on the forum is legendary!There's plenty of people who haven't got the nuts to say what they're thinking, as maybe they don't want to upset their twitter heroes.
In my view
's has produced more facts & photos of the vile people involved in the corruption that has stopped avz in its tracks. And that's a hell of a lot more than some of the jealous tossers on other forms of social media.He calls a spade a spade, and by fuk, he nails it most of the time!
I'm thinking that after last week's agm results, the twists and turns have just got a hell of a lot bigger! Let's wait and see!
Keep up the great work Bags, I'm looking forward to what you discover next!
Cheers,
Nellie xx
Carlos Danger
Top 20
How many Congolese Francs is Felix gonna need to print to pay back AVZ?Taking a step back, we have ongoing cases against them so non-payment on emergency rulings will look poorly on them - so logically they can't just do a runner.
If they do a runner*, because lets face it they probably don't care about ICC cases and its just to drain our funds - I've mentioned before that ICC and ICSID have the power to intercept payments from most international banks and institutions. DLA just need to raise this point to the courts - and wouldn't you know it, if you don't pay according to ICC and ICSID, they don't really favour you going forward.
*This is a possibility for sure.... Refusing to pay is classic DRC, playing the victim, crying poor etc. but there is precedence for intercepting payments which is easy to argue.
For the way payments work, if the damages amount is high, they will draft the payment scheme. If its payment to the Arbitrator and legal teams, its a lump sum immediately, but won't go through AVZ, payable directly to DLA and ICC/ICSID.
We can even ask the courts to force securitization at the next hearings which puts a portion of the payable amount into escrow and will be paid upon a verdict. I'd say with the penalty ticking up to 100mil, we could ask for 20mil as security without much issue - then just work on the verdict and 20mil instant in the bank with the following 80mil that we have to chase up.
Obviously leaving it to DLA and BOD to decide, but that's my takeaway, and why i'm cool as a cucumber.
DYOR.
Why one of the most feared investors in the world holds the key to an Australian energy crisis
Elliott Management is little-known outside the world of high finance, but throughout its legendary history it's made many enemies, including the Argentine navy. It's now eyeing a stoush with an Australian state over energy.
Feared US hedge fund Elliott Management could hold WA 'to ransom' in Bluewaters energy stoush
When the Libertad docked near the Ghanian capital of Accra in mid-2012, it was supposed to be a brief, uneventful stop in the West African country.
But within a matter of hours, those modest expectations would be dashed and the Argentine naval vessel would be thrust into a fight of monumental proportions.
The Libertad was boarded by Ghanian officials acting on behalf of a little-known firm called NML Capital.
And sitting behind that firm was none other than one of the world's most feared and fearsome hedge funds, Elliott Management.
Sebastian Maril is a regional director at Latam Advisors, an independent research firm focusing on Latin America.
Mr Maril said Elliott's actions were simple enough to explain — Argentina owed it money.
"Here in Argentina, 99 per cent of the population do not have a good opinion about Elliott," Mr Maril said.
"Their way of operating, it's controversial, but most of the time it's successful."
Started by famed US investor Paul Singer, Elliott has built a reputation as a company that will go to extraordinary lengths to win its bets.
Some of the biggest companies in the world have been targeted by Elliott, and few have had the better of it.
Among those targeted are giant South Korean electronics company Samsung, US aluminium producer Alcoa and Australia's very own BHP, which revamped its structure following pressure from the firm.
Bringing a country to its knees
By 2012, the fearsome hedge fund had become something of a bête noire for the Argentinian government.
Elliott had paid about $100 million for heavily discounted Argentinian bonds — or debts — after the country defaulted on its obligations to lenders in 2001.
But instead of accepting the meagre settlement terms offered by Buenos Aires, as many other lenders did, Elliott led a push to be paid out in full.
And so began a saga that involved Elliott shadowing Argentina's leaders the world over, attempting to seize anything from the central bank's currency reserves to the presidential plane and SpaceX launch sites.
The campaign even extended to "menacing the Argentine booth at the Frankfurt Book Fair", according to business publication Forbes.
The fight was only settled in 2016, when Argentina agreed to pay the holdout investors in full.
Elliott, for its part, collected $US2.4 billion ($3.6 billion).
"Elliott invested ... in sovereign assets and 10 years later got a $US2.4 billion award from a court and got paid from the Argentine government," Mr Maril said.
"That's a very, very nice investment."
How Elliott came to detain a sovereign country's naval vessel has become the stuff of legend in the worlds of finance and international politics.
But it's also become a salutary lesson for the companies that owe such hedge funds money and any governments or stakeholders who stand between them and a payday.
And it's very much live right now in Western Australia, where Elliott and a number of other lenders have acquired the debt to a troubled coal-fired power plant at the heart of the state's biggest electricity system.
'Naive' state now in funds' sights
The plant, known as Bluewaters, supplies about 15 per cent of the power to the grid that services Australia's south-western corner, including Perth, a city of about two million people and one of the world's biggest resource centres.
It is Australia's newest coal-fired generator, commissioned only 13 years ago.
Yet its Japanese owners have written their investment in the plant down to zero — a product of the intractable woes at its coal supplier, the failed Indian-owned miner Griffin.
What's more, WA's power supplies have been getting increasingly fragile as other coal-fired capacity retires and too little new capacity is built to replace it.
"The state has been naively kicking the can down the road since Griffin was sold to the Indians," said Tim Buckley, a former investment banker and a director of Climate Energy Finance.
"The government says, 'Well, that's a private company's problem'.
"But it's not a private company's problem — it's the West Australian premier's problem."
Mr Buckley said it was no coincidence Elliott and other lenders including big US funds Oaktree Capital and Ares Management had come on board, buying the debt to Bluewaters in 2020 for about 70 cents in the dollar.
They're currently believed to be owed more than $250 million.
He said they were known as distressed debt specialists, meaning they bought loans to troubled companies from banks and other lenders that could no longer stomach the risk of losing their money or the reputational damage of doing business with a particular borrower.
According to Mr Buckley, they were also hugely powerful, commanding war chests worth, collectively, hundreds of billions of dollars.
Bluewaters was a perfect target, he said, because it was not only in choppy financial waters but a strategically vital asset — a key piece of WA's electricity puzzle.
With the WA government planning to phase out its own two remaining coal plants by 2029, he said its importance to the system could well increase, at least for a while.
"What Elliott was doing was getting a seat at the table where they could control Bluewaters," Mr Buckley said.
"It was always about resolving the situation but using their power and knowing that [the Japanese] didn't have the skin in the game and knowing that they could hold the West Australian government to ransom because the West Australian government owns the vast majority of the West Australian electricity grid.
"And we know politicians fear blackouts more than anything else," he said.
"Any politician that has to get re-elected every four years is going to cave in to the threat of blackouts."
Vultures to some, admired by others
Josh Black is the editor-in-chief at New York-based Diligent Market Intelligence, which tracks shareholder activism.
Mr Black said Elliott was what's known as an activist investor, meaning that once it takes a position in a company — through either buying its shares or its debt — it often tried to influence the decisions of management in its own favour.
He said Elliott was the most influential activist fund in the world, though was a mistake to believe the firm was always adversarial.
"It often secures positive outcomes through collaboration and persuasion," Mr Black said.
While terms such as "activist" abound and the companies prefer to use monikers such as "special situation investors", others have far less generous names for them.
At the height of its clash with Elliott, Argentina called the firm a "vulture" that was preying on the misery of an indebted country.
The chiefs of targeted companies, sometimes in impotence, have raged against it as a "raider" and a "profiteer".
Not that Elliott would mind, according to Mr Buckley, who said the company and others like it were driven by returns for their investors, not popularity.
There was also a view that investors such as Elliott helped the financial system by holding borrowers to account.
"That is the strength of the financial system, but it's also the weakness of it," he said.
"There is an amorality to it.
"The role of the government therefore is to actually set the right rules that finance can operate in."
In Australia, that environment has been conducive to multiple investments by Elliott.
While the BHP campaign was the highest profile, Elliott also started — and later sold — renewable energy producer Elliott Green Power, and it has a stake in major Australian mining contractor MACA.
One source, who deals with Elliott directly and asked for anonymity to maintain good relations with the hedge fund, said there was one word that defined lenders like it.
"They're absolutely ruthless," the source said.
"These guys take the prize for that."
Ominously, the source said Elliott, in particular, was unlikely to be overawed by anyone it was dealing with, including governments.
They said this was what made the firm a dangerous dance partner.
Undaunted and unafraid of a fight
"These guys are not afraid to go up against governments," the source said.
"I think governments can fall into the kind of comfort zone that they're the government, they set the rules and all that kind of stuff.
"Someone like Elliott doesn't really believe in that and will fight … It can be dangerous."
To that end, Mr Buckley said the WA government of Roger Cook was naive if it thought Elliott and the other lenders to the Bluewaters power station could be bossed around.
He said so long as WA's main power grid needed Bluewaters — and the increasingly skinny reserves in the system suggested that would be the case for years — the lenders would hold a significant amount of leverage over the state.
And while the government might notionally have emergency powers to order Bluewaters to run, in reality these were theoretical and had never been tested.
"Elliott has no public profile, no public accountability," Mr Buckley said.
"And if they think that [turning off Bluewaters] would play to their financial interests, why wouldn't they?
"It's exactly why they went in — they knew they could hold the state to ransom."
For its part, the WA government is saying little about the lenders, though its limited public statements on the subject to date have been full of bravado.
The state, through its power and water utilities, is a major customer of Bluewaters and has signalled its intention not to renew the contracts when they expire in the coming years.
On top of this, the government has also publicly called for Bluewaters to pay more for the coal it buys from Griffin, which the state is having to prop up after the mine's Indian owners lost almost $1.5 billion.
"From 2025, once the current contract between [state power provider] Synergy and Bluewaters expires, we will not renew it because it is unbelievably expensive," WA Energy Minister Bill Johnston said in state parliament this month.
While no-one from Elliott, Oaktree or Deutsche Bank would comment, a source close to the funds said they only became involved when previous lenders "gave up on the situation".
"We have been actively engaging with the government since then to find a solution that is beneficial for all stakeholders," the source close to the funds said.
"We remain open to discussion, and we hope that we can receive a firm commitment from the WA government to [coal town] Collie, the mine and the use of energy going forward."
Argentina's fall a 'cautionary tale'
Mr Maril, the director of Latam Advisors, urged the WA government to be cautious, saying anyone who took on the likes of Elliott did so at great risk.
"Once Elliott does not get its way, that's when trouble starts," Mr Maril said.
"They don't care. They go for the money. That's what Wall Street does.
"That's why I told you the way hedge funds work sometimes is morally questioned by some people [while] others applaud them."
Almost a decade has passed since Argentina settled its debts with Elliott and other holdout lenders, but Mr Maril said the country is still paying a heavy price.
The money its cash-strapped government raised to pay off creditors is now a millstone around its neck, he said, and Argentina's bonds are once again trading at a fraction of their face value amid the country's mounting economic problems.
"We are back to square one," he said.
According to Mr Maril, the episode showed how relentless and unapologetic hedge funds could be.
"Instead of using those dollars to jump-start the economy, to make sure infrastructure works are done in Argentina, education is successful, people's livelihoods are protected, we are using those dollars to pay beneficiaries of foreign judgements and holdout creditors," he said.
"We are not Spain, we are not Australia.
"We can't manage and can't find a way to pay these people."
Carlos Danger
Top 20
How many Congolese Francs is Felix gonna need to print to pay back AVZ?
Why one of the most feared investors in the world holds the key to an Australian energy crisis
Elliott Management is little-known outside the world of high finance, but throughout its legendary history it's made many enemies, including the Argentine navy. It's now eyeing a stoush with an Australian state over energy.www.abc.net.au
Feared US hedge fund Elliott Management could hold WA 'to ransom' in Bluewaters energy stoush
When the Libertad docked near the Ghanian capital of Accra in mid-2012, it was supposed to be a brief, uneventful stop in the West African country.
But within a matter of hours, those modest expectations would be dashed and the Argentine naval vessel would be thrust into a fight of monumental proportions.
The Libertad was boarded by Ghanian officials acting on behalf of a little-known firm called NML Capital.
And sitting behind that firm was none other than one of the world's most feared and fearsome hedge funds, Elliott Management.
Sebastian Maril is a regional director at Latam Advisors, an independent research firm focusing on Latin America.
Mr Maril said Elliott's actions were simple enough to explain — Argentina owed it money.
"Here in Argentina, 99 per cent of the population do not have a good opinion about Elliott," Mr Maril said.
"Their way of operating, it's controversial, but most of the time it's successful."
Started by famed US investor Paul Singer, Elliott has built a reputation as a company that will go to extraordinary lengths to win its bets.
Some of the biggest companies in the world have been targeted by Elliott, and few have had the better of it.
Among those targeted are giant South Korean electronics company Samsung, US aluminium producer Alcoa and Australia's very own BHP, which revamped its structure following pressure from the firm.
Bringing a country to its knees
By 2012, the fearsome hedge fund had become something of a bête noire for the Argentinian government.
Elliott had paid about $100 million for heavily discounted Argentinian bonds — or debts — after the country defaulted on its obligations to lenders in 2001.
But instead of accepting the meagre settlement terms offered by Buenos Aires, as many other lenders did, Elliott led a push to be paid out in full.
And so began a saga that involved Elliott shadowing Argentina's leaders the world over, attempting to seize anything from the central bank's currency reserves to the presidential plane and SpaceX launch sites.
The campaign even extended to "menacing the Argentine booth at the Frankfurt Book Fair", according to business publication Forbes.
The fight was only settled in 2016, when Argentina agreed to pay the holdout investors in full.
Elliott, for its part, collected $US2.4 billion ($3.6 billion).
"Elliott invested ... in sovereign assets and 10 years later got a $US2.4 billion award from a court and got paid from the Argentine government," Mr Maril said.
"That's a very, very nice investment."
How Elliott came to detain a sovereign country's naval vessel has become the stuff of legend in the worlds of finance and international politics.
But it's also become a salutary lesson for the companies that owe such hedge funds money and any governments or stakeholders who stand between them and a payday.
And it's very much live right now in Western Australia, where Elliott and a number of other lenders have acquired the debt to a troubled coal-fired power plant at the heart of the state's biggest electricity system.
'Naive' state now in funds' sights
The plant, known as Bluewaters, supplies about 15 per cent of the power to the grid that services Australia's south-western corner, including Perth, a city of about two million people and one of the world's biggest resource centres.
It is Australia's newest coal-fired generator, commissioned only 13 years ago.
Yet its Japanese owners have written their investment in the plant down to zero — a product of the intractable woes at its coal supplier, the failed Indian-owned miner Griffin.
What's more, WA's power supplies have been getting increasingly fragile as other coal-fired capacity retires and too little new capacity is built to replace it.
"The state has been naively kicking the can down the road since Griffin was sold to the Indians," said Tim Buckley, a former investment banker and a director of Climate Energy Finance.
"The government says, 'Well, that's a private company's problem'.
"But it's not a private company's problem — it's the West Australian premier's problem."
Mr Buckley said it was no coincidence Elliott and other lenders including big US funds Oaktree Capital and Ares Management had come on board, buying the debt to Bluewaters in 2020 for about 70 cents in the dollar.
They're currently believed to be owed more than $250 million.
He said they were known as distressed debt specialists, meaning they bought loans to troubled companies from banks and other lenders that could no longer stomach the risk of losing their money or the reputational damage of doing business with a particular borrower.
According to Mr Buckley, they were also hugely powerful, commanding war chests worth, collectively, hundreds of billions of dollars.
Bluewaters was a perfect target, he said, because it was not only in choppy financial waters but a strategically vital asset — a key piece of WA's electricity puzzle.
With the WA government planning to phase out its own two remaining coal plants by 2029, he said its importance to the system could well increase, at least for a while.
"What Elliott was doing was getting a seat at the table where they could control Bluewaters," Mr Buckley said.
"It was always about resolving the situation but using their power and knowing that [the Japanese] didn't have the skin in the game and knowing that they could hold the West Australian government to ransom because the West Australian government owns the vast majority of the West Australian electricity grid.
"And we know politicians fear blackouts more than anything else," he said.
"Any politician that has to get re-elected every four years is going to cave in to the threat of blackouts."
Vultures to some, admired by others
Josh Black is the editor-in-chief at New York-based Diligent Market Intelligence, which tracks shareholder activism.
Mr Black said Elliott was what's known as an activist investor, meaning that once it takes a position in a company — through either buying its shares or its debt — it often tried to influence the decisions of management in its own favour.
He said Elliott was the most influential activist fund in the world, though was a mistake to believe the firm was always adversarial.
"It often secures positive outcomes through collaboration and persuasion," Mr Black said.
While terms such as "activist" abound and the companies prefer to use monikers such as "special situation investors", others have far less generous names for them.
At the height of its clash with Elliott, Argentina called the firm a "vulture" that was preying on the misery of an indebted country.
The chiefs of targeted companies, sometimes in impotence, have raged against it as a "raider" and a "profiteer".
Not that Elliott would mind, according to Mr Buckley, who said the company and others like it were driven by returns for their investors, not popularity.
There was also a view that investors such as Elliott helped the financial system by holding borrowers to account.
"That is the strength of the financial system, but it's also the weakness of it," he said.
"There is an amorality to it.
"The role of the government therefore is to actually set the right rules that finance can operate in."
In Australia, that environment has been conducive to multiple investments by Elliott.
While the BHP campaign was the highest profile, Elliott also started — and later sold — renewable energy producer Elliott Green Power, and it has a stake in major Australian mining contractor MACA.
One source, who deals with Elliott directly and asked for anonymity to maintain good relations with the hedge fund, said there was one word that defined lenders like it.
"They're absolutely ruthless," the source said.
"These guys take the prize for that."
Ominously, the source said Elliott, in particular, was unlikely to be overawed by anyone it was dealing with, including governments.
They said this was what made the firm a dangerous dance partner.
Undaunted and unafraid of a fight
"These guys are not afraid to go up against governments," the source said.
"I think governments can fall into the kind of comfort zone that they're the government, they set the rules and all that kind of stuff.
"Someone like Elliott doesn't really believe in that and will fight … It can be dangerous."
To that end, Mr Buckley said the WA government of Roger Cook was naive if it thought Elliott and the other lenders to the Bluewaters power station could be bossed around.
He said so long as WA's main power grid needed Bluewaters — and the increasingly skinny reserves in the system suggested that would be the case for years — the lenders would hold a significant amount of leverage over the state.
And while the government might notionally have emergency powers to order Bluewaters to run, in reality these were theoretical and had never been tested.
"Elliott has no public profile, no public accountability," Mr Buckley said.
"And if they think that [turning off Bluewaters] would play to their financial interests, why wouldn't they?
"It's exactly why they went in — they knew they could hold the state to ransom."
For its part, the WA government is saying little about the lenders, though its limited public statements on the subject to date have been full of bravado.
The state, through its power and water utilities, is a major customer of Bluewaters and has signalled its intention not to renew the contracts when they expire in the coming years.
On top of this, the government has also publicly called for Bluewaters to pay more for the coal it buys from Griffin, which the state is having to prop up after the mine's Indian owners lost almost $1.5 billion.
"From 2025, once the current contract between [state power provider] Synergy and Bluewaters expires, we will not renew it because it is unbelievably expensive," WA Energy Minister Bill Johnston said in state parliament this month.
While no-one from Elliott, Oaktree or Deutsche Bank would comment, a source close to the funds said they only became involved when previous lenders "gave up on the situation".
"We have been actively engaging with the government since then to find a solution that is beneficial for all stakeholders," the source close to the funds said.
"We remain open to discussion, and we hope that we can receive a firm commitment from the WA government to [coal town] Collie, the mine and the use of energy going forward."
Argentina's fall a 'cautionary tale'
Mr Maril, the director of Latam Advisors, urged the WA government to be cautious, saying anyone who took on the likes of Elliott did so at great risk.
"Once Elliott does not get its way, that's when trouble starts," Mr Maril said.
"They don't care. They go for the money. That's what Wall Street does.
"That's why I told you the way hedge funds work sometimes is morally questioned by some people [while] others applaud them."
Almost a decade has passed since Argentina settled its debts with Elliott and other holdout lenders, but Mr Maril said the country is still paying a heavy price.
The money its cash-strapped government raised to pay off creditors is now a millstone around its neck, he said, and Argentina's bonds are once again trading at a fraction of their face value amid the country's mounting economic problems.
"We are back to square one," he said.
According to Mr Maril, the episode showed how relentless and unapologetic hedge funds could be.
"Instead of using those dollars to jump-start the economy, to make sure infrastructure works are done in Argentina, education is successful, people's livelihoods are protected, we are using those dollars to pay beneficiaries of foreign judgements and holdout creditors," he said.
"We are not Spain, we are not Australia.
"We can't manage and can't find a way to pay these people."
View attachment 51115
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MoneyBags1348
Top 20
Just save this page Hudnut, and we’ll compare notes about Zijin when the time comes…. Now I’m going
Time to apply a little more pressure on Zijin’s reputation again. Dave doing his bit on Twitter….
Translated from French by Google
Zijin in DRC committed corruption, illegal fraud, human rights violations, threatening journalist with death, evicting residents in Kolwezi, negligence for death of workers, carrying out work without approval
https://thestockexchange.com.au/threads/zijin-operating-with-impunity-in-drc.250325/
Last edited:
Scoota30
Regular
What is Congolese Francs? I thought the official currency in the DRC was Chinese YuanHow many Congolese Francs is Felix gonna need to print to pay back AVZ?
Why one of the most feared investors in the world holds the key to an Australian energy crisis
Elliott Management is little-known outside the world of high finance, but throughout its legendary history it's made many enemies, including the Argentine navy. It's now eyeing a stoush with an Australian state over energy.
Feared US hedge fund Elliott Management could hold WA 'to ransom' in Bluewaters energy stoush
When the Libertad docked near the Ghanian capital of Accra in mid-2012, it was supposed to be a brief, uneventful stop in the West African country.
But within a matter of hours, those modest expectations would be dashed and the Argentine naval vessel would be thrust into a fight of monumental proportions.
The Libertad was boarded by Ghanian officials acting on behalf of a little-known firm called NML Capital.
And sitting behind that firm was none other than one of the world's most feared and fearsome hedge funds, Elliott Management.
Sebastian Maril is a regional director at Latam Advisors, an independent research firm focusing on Latin America.
Mr Maril said Elliott's actions were simple enough to explain — Argentina owed it money.
"Here in Argentina, 99 per cent of the population do not have a good opinion about Elliott," Mr Maril said.
"Their way of operating, it's controversial, but most of the time it's successful."
Started by famed US investor Paul Singer, Elliott has built a reputation as a company that will go to extraordinary lengths to win its bets.
Some of the biggest companies in the world have been targeted by Elliott, and few have had the better of it.
Among those targeted are giant South Korean electronics company Samsung, US aluminium producer Alcoa and Australia's very own BHP, which revamped its structure following pressure from the firm.
Bringing a country to its knees
By 2012, the fearsome hedge fund had become something of a bête noire for the Argentinian government.
Elliott had paid about $100 million for heavily discounted Argentinian bonds — or debts — after the country defaulted on its obligations to lenders in 2001.
But instead of accepting the meagre settlement terms offered by Buenos Aires, as many other lenders did, Elliott led a push to be paid out in full.
And so began a saga that involved Elliott shadowing Argentina's leaders the world over, attempting to seize anything from the central bank's currency reserves to the presidential plane and SpaceX launch sites.
The campaign even extended to "menacing the Argentine booth at the Frankfurt Book Fair", according to business publication Forbes.
The fight was only settled in 2016, when Argentina agreed to pay the holdout investors in full.
Elliott, for its part, collected $US2.4 billion ($3.6 billion).
"Elliott invested ... in sovereign assets and 10 years later got a $US2.4 billion award from a court and got paid from the Argentine government," Mr Maril said.
"That's a very, very nice investment."
How Elliott came to detain a sovereign country's naval vessel has become the stuff of legend in the worlds of finance and international politics.
But it's also become a salutary lesson for the companies that owe such hedge funds money and any governments or stakeholders who stand between them and a payday.
And it's very much live right now in Western Australia, where Elliott and a number of other lenders have acquired the debt to a troubled coal-fired power plant at the heart of the state's biggest electricity system.
'Naive' state now in funds' sights
The plant, known as Bluewaters, supplies about 15 per cent of the power to the grid that services Australia's south-western corner, including Perth, a city of about two million people and one of the world's biggest resource centres.
It is Australia's newest coal-fired generator, commissioned only 13 years ago.
Yet its Japanese owners have written their investment in the plant down to zero — a product of the intractable woes at its coal supplier, the failed Indian-owned miner Griffin.
What's more, WA's power supplies have been getting increasingly fragile as other coal-fired capacity retires and too little new capacity is built to replace it.
"The state has been naively kicking the can down the road since Griffin was sold to the Indians," said Tim Buckley, a former investment banker and a director of Climate Energy Finance.
"The government says, 'Well, that's a private company's problem'.
"But it's not a private company's problem — it's the West Australian premier's problem."
Mr Buckley said it was no coincidence Elliott and other lenders including big US funds Oaktree Capital and Ares Management had come on board, buying the debt to Bluewaters in 2020 for about 70 cents in the dollar.
They're currently believed to be owed more than $250 million.
He said they were known as distressed debt specialists, meaning they bought loans to troubled companies from banks and other lenders that could no longer stomach the risk of losing their money or the reputational damage of doing business with a particular borrower.
According to Mr Buckley, they were also hugely powerful, commanding war chests worth, collectively, hundreds of billions of dollars.
Bluewaters was a perfect target, he said, because it was not only in choppy financial waters but a strategically vital asset — a key piece of WA's electricity puzzle.
With the WA government planning to phase out its own two remaining coal plants by 2029, he said its importance to the system could well increase, at least for a while.
"What Elliott was doing was getting a seat at the table where they could control Bluewaters," Mr Buckley said.
"It was always about resolving the situation but using their power and knowing that [the Japanese] didn't have the skin in the game and knowing that they could hold the West Australian government to ransom because the West Australian government owns the vast majority of the West Australian electricity grid.
"And we know politicians fear blackouts more than anything else," he said.
"Any politician that has to get re-elected every four years is going to cave in to the threat of blackouts."
Vultures to some, admired by others
Josh Black is the editor-in-chief at New York-based Diligent Market Intelligence, which tracks shareholder activism.
Mr Black said Elliott was what's known as an activist investor, meaning that once it takes a position in a company — through either buying its shares or its debt — it often tried to influence the decisions of management in its own favour.
He said Elliott was the most influential activist fund in the world, though was a mistake to believe the firm was always adversarial.
"It often secures positive outcomes through collaboration and persuasion," Mr Black said.
While terms such as "activist" abound and the companies prefer to use monikers such as "special situation investors", others have far less generous names for them.
At the height of its clash with Elliott, Argentina called the firm a "vulture" that was preying on the misery of an indebted country.
The chiefs of targeted companies, sometimes in impotence, have raged against it as a "raider" and a "profiteer".
Not that Elliott would mind, according to Mr Buckley, who said the company and others like it were driven by returns for their investors, not popularity.
There was also a view that investors such as Elliott helped the financial system by holding borrowers to account.
"That is the strength of the financial system, but it's also the weakness of it," he said.
"There is an amorality to it.
"The role of the government therefore is to actually set the right rules that finance can operate in."
In Australia, that environment has been conducive to multiple investments by Elliott.
While the BHP campaign was the highest profile, Elliott also started — and later sold — renewable energy producer Elliott Green Power, and it has a stake in major Australian mining contractor MACA.
One source, who deals with Elliott directly and asked for anonymity to maintain good relations with the hedge fund, said there was one word that defined lenders like it.
"They're absolutely ruthless," the source said.
"These guys take the prize for that."
Ominously, the source said Elliott, in particular, was unlikely to be overawed by anyone it was dealing with, including governments.
They said this was what made the firm a dangerous dance partner.
Undaunted and unafraid of a fight
"These guys are not afraid to go up against governments," the source said.
"I think governments can fall into the kind of comfort zone that they're the government, they set the rules and all that kind of stuff.
"Someone like Elliott doesn't really believe in that and will fight … It can be dangerous."
To that end, Mr Buckley said the WA government of Roger Cook was naive if it thought Elliott and the other lenders to the Bluewaters power station could be bossed around.
He said so long as WA's main power grid needed Bluewaters — and the increasingly skinny reserves in the system suggested that would be the case for years — the lenders would hold a significant amount of leverage over the state.
And while the government might notionally have emergency powers to order Bluewaters to run, in reality these were theoretical and had never been tested.
"Elliott has no public profile, no public accountability," Mr Buckley said.
"And if they think that [turning off Bluewaters] would play to their financial interests, why wouldn't they?
"It's exactly why they went in — they knew they could hold the state to ransom."
For its part, the WA government is saying little about the lenders, though its limited public statements on the subject to date have been full of bravado.
The state, through its power and water utilities, is a major customer of Bluewaters and has signalled its intention not to renew the contracts when they expire in the coming years.
On top of this, the government has also publicly called for Bluewaters to pay more for the coal it buys from Griffin, which the state is having to prop up after the mine's Indian owners lost almost $1.5 billion.
"From 2025, once the current contract between [state power provider] Synergy and Bluewaters expires, we will not renew it because it is unbelievably expensive," WA Energy Minister Bill Johnston said in state parliament this month.
While no-one from Elliott, Oaktree or Deutsche Bank would comment, a source close to the funds said they only became involved when previous lenders "gave up on the situation".
"We have been actively engaging with the government since then to find a solution that is beneficial for all stakeholders," the source close to the funds said.
"We remain open to discussion, and we hope that we can receive a firm commitment from the WA government to [coal town] Collie, the mine and the use of energy going forward."
Argentina's fall a 'cautionary tale'
Mr Maril, the director of Latam Advisors, urged the WA government to be cautious, saying anyone who took on the likes of Elliott did so at great risk.
"Once Elliott does not get its way, that's when trouble starts," Mr Maril said.
"They don't care. They go for the money. That's what Wall Street does.
"That's why I told you the way hedge funds work sometimes is morally questioned by some people [while] others applaud them."
Almost a decade has passed since Argentina settled its debts with Elliott and other holdout lenders, but Mr Maril said the country is still paying a heavy price.
The money its cash-strapped government raised to pay off creditors is now a millstone around its neck, he said, and Argentina's bonds are once again trading at a fraction of their face value amid the country's mounting economic problems.
"We are back to square one," he said.
According to Mr Maril, the episode showed how relentless and unapologetic hedge funds could be.
"Instead of using those dollars to jump-start the economy, to make sure infrastructure works are done in Argentina, education is successful, people's livelihoods are protected, we are using those dollars to pay beneficiaries of foreign judgements and holdout creditors," he said.
"We are not Spain, we are not Australia.
"We can't manage and can't find a way to pay these people."
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