It is just past midnight so I am just throwing an opinion off the top of my head.

I do not know for sure whether disclosure of amount of shares owned is dependent on each individual company or not but...

I have shares of a canadian registered company that was a subject of a hostile take over and the disclosure was mendatory if one owned 10 or more percent of the outstanding shares. That requirement could have come from the regulating agencies or perhaps just from the company's standard procedures.

There was a shareholder protection plan in place but it did not need to kick in because most of the holders of that company were too wise to accept a mediocre offer. So the shares tendered were well below ten percent.

Note that with current market place all company shares are depressed to some degree, some by as much as a factor of ten. That should encourage big caps to have a field day in choosing as to whom to aquire, But the big caps also are affected and so they must go outside to find financing.

To obtain that financing they have to convince the financiers ( potential partners if you will ) that the aquisition is good not only to the big cap but also to the financiers. That is why I refer to the state of the market, just about all potential financiers are very nervous. Note that while individual home owner mortgages have mostly been addressed, I hear that business type loans are still mostly to be renegotiated and not written off. That means that capital for risky ventures, and mining is very risky, is especially tight. Note the recent warrants that ECU issued to reaquire the Hecla mill. In my opinion the terms were wery favourable to the financiers and probably would not have been so in different times.

On the other hand, ECU has a vast ( valuable ) resource in a very mining friendly location.
The two mills I suspect are a bit small for a big cap to be interested in. They would need something several times bigger ( thousands of tons instead of hundreds ) for them to bite immediately.
Should we build a larger mill, or expand the last one we aquired, then I would say watch out, they would throw money at you and try to convince you to part with your shares.
Whether to aquire now or later would mostly depend on how much ready cash the buyer could get hold of today. Obviously better today than some later date and pay several times more.

Yes I do suspect that there are eyes watching us and some of our shares are going side ways. The share price hold back indicates to me that that is actually happening.

But then what do I know. Just my midnight rant.