The posts I made from the October 1 informational meeting in Las Vegas (and over the next few days) had a very positive tone — as I felt it was a very positive meeting, all things considered.
However, before we receive the expected announcement from Medinah tomorrow (November 1), I want to register my personal disappointment regarding the very slender volume of communication we’ve had from Medinah since that meeting.
No matter what (if anything) we are told tomorrow, I will be profoundly disappointed if the pace of communications does not pick up significantly.
Those of us at the Oct 1 informational meeting were assured a minimum of thirty times that, from here on out, everything about Medinah would be “open and transparent.” I did not keep count or run a stopwatch, but at one point I noted that over the course of the past (approximately) sixty seconds, I had heard this phrase repeated four times. “Open and transparent.”
I also lost count of the times we were told that we were now in a “new day at Medinah.”
But to me, this feels exactly like just about every other day of the five years since I’ve been invested here. I do not feel any sense of openness or transparency about whatever has been going on at Medinah during the past month, or this minute. Change of management. Company goes silent. Share price plunges. Groundhog day.
It is of course possible that everything at Medinah might be going great, but it’s just as possible, especially given all the legal uncertainty, that Maglas, after having tied Medinah up as tightly as it legally can, has in fact decided to suspend all the ADL/Merlin/Caren/Pegaso Negro/LDM activities of its 100% owned subsidiary (Auryn) and to focus instead on any of the dozen or so (?) other promising (and less-contentious) properties Maglas owns in the same neighborhood. Might it not be a wise business decision for Maglas to just tell Auryn to sit tight for a couple of years and let the dust settle while Maglas concentrates on making money elsewhere? Do they really need this Les/SEC/crackerjack-Las-Vegas-legal-team headache right now? But how would any of us know what they are thinking? And who would ask these question for us?
I have told our new CEO that I think he might serve himself and this whole investor community by giving us frequent — even daily — updates, just so that we at least know that he and Medinah are alive. In the past, we have been forced to exist on starvation news rations, which have always led us to fear the worst, and in every single instance the worst we could imagine was nothing compared to how bad things actually were. And here we are, with our share price at its lowest in at least the five years since I’ve been here, and with no change in the meager level of communication from the company.
The irony of our director of communication being promoted to CEO is impossible to ignore.
Kevin answered my first email on this subject. I did not receive an answer to my second. I’m sure he has his hands full. I’m pulling for him. He struck me as a very nice guy. So did Gary Goodin. But niceness is totally irrelevant here. What’s relevant is that this abused shareholder base should be kept as informed as possible about what is going on at Medinah, without having to wonder, without having to beg for information.
Medinah (and Auryn and Maglas) clearly know the importance of supplying information to those of us in the shareholder community. All of the Medinah/Auryn/Maglas officers came to the informational meeting with a clear intent to portray themselves as open and transparent and eager to include all of us in as much information as they could possibly supply. They even made sure that something happened (I do not for an instant believe that this was just some coincidence — I think some serious push was made) so that the presenters could announce to those of us at the meeting that “production” had started the very day before. They even specified the number of meters (8) of progress achieved in the relevant adit during that previous day (Friday), and, as I recall, they even announced later during the informational meeting that an additional 8 meters of progress had been achieved on Saturday, the day of the meeting. These specific numbers were great to hear. It made us feel as though we actually knew that at least something was going on on “our” mountain. Those of us in attendance felt sort of included.
This shareholder base has been horribly abused for years now (even decades) — actually, the word abuse is far too polite — we are all probably in some sort of survivors’ shock syndrome, incapable of truly registering the extent of the criminality we have endured. I think anyone who wants to be viewed as looking out for our interests, who actually cares about us, would at least make a show of keeping us in the loop. An open and transparent management that was actually committed to a new day at Medinah would have given us more this month than the few crumbs that have been brushed off the table and fallen to us. Survivors of abuse need a little comfort. Not a cold shoulder. Not We’ll-talk-to-you-once-a-month. IF-you-behave. Go-away. Don’t bug us. We know what we’re doing. The failure to communicate with us raises questions about management’s competency to accomplish the larger, much trickier tasks ahead of us and them. Is our current management up to the job?
At the meeting, the presenters at the front of the room outlined half a dozen or more topics: the Caren; the Merlin; the Pegaso Negro; the LDM; Nuoco; the August confrontation with Les; the complaint to the SEC; the legal team that has been hired. There were more topics, too — these are just off the top of my head. But I haven’t heard a significant word about any of these topics. Has NOTHING noteworthy happened in regards to ANY of those topics during the past month? Are we still in “production” even? The most emotional and direct communication we had (to this board, at least) was Kevin’s complaint that someone had shared one of his emails without permission.
Every person knows the feeling of having been fully acknowledged and communicated with. I’ll bet no one feels that today, re Medinah. A full month after “open and transparent” and “a new day.”
Maybe that will change tomorrow. (Kevin did tell me via email that we were informed at the meeting that there would be once a month updates from Medinah. I must have stepped out to use the bathroom during that part. Or my thoughts must have drifted elsewhere. Because I do not remember that. If I did hear it and did not immediately object, shame on me! But I have no memory of that. Once a month is torture.)
I hope that tomorrow’s once-a-month communication from Medinah blows all of us and me right out of the water. I hope the news is unbearably great. Regardless, I still think it is in the company’s best interest to keep us more fully and more regularly updated.
It’s what you expect of friends.
It’s what you expect of competent leaders.
madmen — Brad Newsham