More troubling due diligence ... this time from a coal industry insider who's done a lot of work in Mongolia:
1. OJ is in personal bankruptcy (his levered bet to Mongolian residential and commercial real estate backfired, and was compounded by DP party retribution after 2012), and he has pledged his MCS stake in MMC as collateral.
2. My contact was very skeptical of our having any kind of investment edge in this case. He said that long-time Mongolian coal industry insiders who are close to the story don't even have the visibility to handicap the odds.
3. He has no idea when a TT deal would get done, but indicated that "not in our lifetimes" would be the odds-favorite.
4. Even though MPP has control of Parliament, it is not a united group. Furthermore, there were plenty of Russian-loyalist MP's who would do everything in their power to block a TT deal involving China.
5. He thought MMC was uninvestable until a railroad got built -- which, again, he thought would be never -- because the target customer for MMC's HCC is located near China's coast, as opposed to the
"death by a thousand paper cuts" of getting your product through countless shady middlemen in Inner Mongolia on its way to northeastern China.
6. MCC stock in HK is manipulated by insiders. They release bad news in advance of buying shares, and leak good news in advance of unloading shares.
7. Mongolian HCC is competitively disadvantaged relative to Australian HCC because it has a lower thermal content. It is superior to the HCC found in Inner Mongolia, however.
What's your take on all of this, including my prior post?
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
