  We investigate properties of the contact exponent (in the sense of Hironaka
[Hi]) of plane algebroid curve singularities over algebraically closed fields
of arbitrary characteristic. We prove that the contact exponent is an
equisingularity invariant and give a new proof of the stability of the maximal
contact. Then we prove a bound for the Milnor number and determine the
equisingularity class of algebroid curves for which this bound is attained. We
do not use the method of Newton's diagrams. Our tool is the logarithmic
distance developed in [GB-P1].
