I want to adderss the idea about a lower buyout price because of optics and premiums to averages.

What the public see's is an important part of every public company because the public has their eye on you all the time. Kind of like how celebrities and politicians need to have fake smiles and pander to fans/voters. That being said, thinking of either CUU or TECK as a public company is not an appropriate assumption for the purposes we require.

Although they are public in that you and me can purchase it, they are not public in the way they operate. For CUU, that should be obvious - with nearly 65% insider owned, and probably 5-10% held very tightly by longs in large amounts for trading purposes we may as well be a private company. Because of this, there is very few shares compared to what's outstanding that can move the price IN BOTH DIRECTIONS. It's volatile on paper because of the liquidity of the shares traded compared to the overall shares outstanding. TECK in terms of deals, may as well also be considered private rather than public in that they have a two-tier share structure. A shares and B shares. A shares hold far more weight in voting rights, and like others have said is pretty much a "family business" in that the Keevils hold the voting shares. If you accept the above, then you can see why both would operate more like a private company - not being as concerned about optics but would be more driven by real value.

The other thing I'd like to discuss is a premium on the all time high, moving averages the current SP etc. Buyouts when done by private companies (which for all intents and purposes I'm considering both companies to be) are done on value of the aquisition and not on the prices. However, that being said - if they were concerned about the premium, it would be very easy to move to the upside. Yesterday we had 6000 shares move us down 4 cents. Look at the level 2's, and tell me that someone not trying to get a good average cost, but instead wanted the price to go up because of say "optics" (Hint hint: TECK buying on the open market) the price wouldn't double in a few days and then we had a "premium from there"? You don't think if TECK announces a backin (but not a buyout at the same time) our SP won't move up and a few days after that the buyout price looks more reasonable from there? Even outside of triggers such as that, our volume is relatively low, you don't think a big genuine buyer prior to news (such as stiefel last year) would move the price up just trying to get a position of a few million shares?

My point is that if optics is an issue, they can change how it looks. CUU hasn't been trying to sell to the market because they have a free financier. TECK hasn't been trying to sell to the market because they don't want competing bids. No one wants optics now. If they want it later, they can easily come up with it and make it look amazing.