Good post...I'll just comment on 1 excerpt.

"Patrick has me worried that he might think that Kinross would be the best bidder because of their environmental and community standards. Patrick might feel some kind of personal responsibility to the Shura community to make sure who ever runs the FDN project would do so with these concerns in mind....not like a Barrick or Newmont, who might only have profit motives in mind..."

You know I might have agreed with you on this 3 days ago but now I'm convinced that Patrick feels zilch for these people. Either this is all part of a grand master plan to start the bidding or incompetence at its finest. The good part for us is the seniors don't care about his motives....they just want the FDN deposit and all the goes with that.

I don't like the 15 million share fiasco either but doubt it would be a barrier to more bids.

Keep in mind that Kinross wins here no matter what so a $15 bid is no skin off their back. They've just made a cool 10.25 * 15million plus the 42 million. If they want to match they can do that too. Pretty sweet situation for Kinross to be in right now.