Mike , thank you for your comments. You always articulate well your ideas and feelings and in doing so, while often times controversial, they show tenacity and an indomitable spirit. I am not in a position to judge the validity or otherwise of your comments -- a mere neophyte, I am, seriously.
However, in understanding the context for the arguments and positions you take and I appreciate them, I attempt on occasion to understand the difficulty presented to management of mining companies like CVR in attempting to be strategic in decisions about investing resources in an uncertain and undervalued sector. In making decisions, top managers and boards have many forces dynamically acting upon them. Simultaneous demands, I imagine, come from:
1. Investors of varying types who realistically and unrealistically want to be indulged (common shareholders including proprietorship interests;
2. Suppliers of talent, manufacturers and real estate services who provide intellectual and physical capital of different types want a part of the action or want to be remunerated;
3. Regulatory groups who have massive machine-like bureaucracies (who expect and apply ethically principled actions in dealing with such companies it is hoped) in matters of laws regulations, taxes, services, court system, and political processes;
4. Competitors in the industry who want some of the action through hostile take-over or joint-venture arrangements who act as quasi- associates/competitors and others who compete from a position of sheer size of capitalisation, track record, prominence, and access to reserve capacity make competing by junior companies in the mining sector for investor interest difficult especially in the current context of less than exuberant endorsement towards it.
5. Human capital requirements which come from employment agencies, unions, post-secondary institutions, schools, employees from other companies.
6. Financial capital issues arising from considerations or demands from stock markets, banks, savings and loans, exchange rate, and private investors.
7. Techniques of production arising from new innovations elsewhere or from demands associated with ecology, government regulation and interest groups, or from extraction difficulties.
8. Recession, unemployment rate, inflation rate, rate of investment, economics, and growth.
The above is obviously not an exhaustive list but it does possibly point to a considerable dynamic context for managing a mining organisation set within a domestic and global context. Complexity is considerable and I can imagine a series of circles identified for each of the various issues mentioned above connected by "rubber bands" and it being the responsibility of top management to consider which circle to "pull on" while avoiding a critical imbalance of anther and others-- a little humbling, me thinks!
Cyber Rock |
