Right. The 65% Philex interest includes the 26% FECOF interest... and without that 26% interest, the Philex holding would be 39%.
That creates some obvious potential tensions... as the FECOF management's responsibility, which Canadian regulators will take quite seriously, is to maximize the value of the investments the company holds for the unique benefit of all the FECOF shareholders, and it is not to maximize the value of or any benefit of FECOF's holdings in a way that primarily maximizes unique benefits for Philex.
The statement of the President that recent seismic surveys have revealed there are Iraq sized oil reserves offshore Palawan does very little that might be useful in downplaying the potential value of investments in the region... and whether they can be pinned to a specific set of leases or not, the parallel statements made about the gas resources aren't something we should ignore.
Philex bought a small additional Forum interest along with a direct purchase of FECOF shares in the transactions completed at the beginning of last year. Back then, it was pretty obvious that Philex management made the deal they did then, the way they did, in part, as a tacit recognition of the fact that they knew more than FECOF management did about the real value of the FECOF holdings...
It seems likely that Philex management STILL knows a lot more about the real value of FECOF shares than most FECOF shareholders likely do... but, I don't think you can make that same statement about management, now... given they are basically close enough to the same...
What remains, it seems, (among other things discussed elsewhere) is to see how FECOF/Philex management will proceed next in seeking to maximize the value, for all FECOF holders, of the FECOF ownership position in a quite significant holding of Forum shares... that, in itself, in a transaction, is clearly the ONLY block other than the other Philex holdings, that is large enough to constitute a "control block".
What we are talking about control OF is pretty obviously an not insignificant issue... but, still... what the value is... and control over the value... are each issues that matter.
The transactions concluded early last year... seem to suggest either that Philex has or had little intent to "niggle" us out of very significant values taken from us at prices they knew were well below true value... or else it says that Canada wasn't going to let them do that, if they tried...
From there... and whatever else it is that you might think about the share structure and the nature of the various divisions in the ownership interests in Philex itself... I think you need to go back and consider more closely and carefully why it is that Philex management would ever have found it might be useful for them to position the locus of ownership of a significant pile of their assets... in the foreign jurisdictions that they have ?
I'll leave that there, as I have before, and sign off for the evening... while suggesting that if you think about that hard for a while, you might find yourself thinking a bit differently about the meaning of some of the recent management changes than you might have otherwise...
JMHO
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
