"I understand that CLF wanted the vote by ballots. What does that mean exactly. Must shareholders be presented at the next meeting in Toronto to personally cast the ballots. Is on-line voting by computers still an option?"

It grossly means a secret voting, each shareholder present and each proxy holder (representing the votes of absent shareholders) being called to mark their votes on a papersheet. Votes are then counted and the result announced to the assembly. Here, Cliffs' attorney asked a vote by ballots for one of many reasons, one of which being that this would prevent the nay-voters to be identified as such in front of the assembly - and perhaps avoiding that Cliffs be identified as the only voter having the guts to rise his hand as nay-voter in the room! Maybe he did not want to announce in front of the assembly how many votes he held as proxyholder (in addition to Cliffs' votes). But also (to be honest, this is probably the first reason!), it may just be asked to avoid a discomfort to the presidency who would have to ask the number of votes represented by each hand raised - and probably ending with a written vote anyways!!! Ballot voting is not unusual when there is dissidency on a specific point at an assembly.

We will certainly be sent new proxies to vote at the adjourned assembly in Toronto. Not sure I will take a plane this time!

My take is that maybe Cliffs could well let the vote go ahead on the Share conversion since there is no dilution concern as regards to the Subordinate / Multi-voting Shares proposal. The problem Management has to cope with, in my sense, is to convince the mass of shareholders that it is a completely harmless operation. Again: rolling shares together in 50-pieces holders, and allowing them to be unrolled at will is one of the smootest operation one could see happening in a Share Capital Structure. But (I apologize in advance to my friend Gleegee) some of us cannot believe that a Management Team can be as open and straight-forward, and also persistently respectful to shareholders as ours is to us!

GLTA.

BaBeliever.