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A friend just sent this - re Eike and Colombia:
Bloomberg
Batista Plans IPO of Colombia Gold Unit, Abandons EBX Sale
March 14, 2011, 5:15 PM EDT
By Juan Pablo Spinetto and Fabiola Moura
March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista plans an initial public offering of a gold mining unit in Colombia that he says is worth at least three times more than the company’s current value.
Batista, Brazil’s richest person, will list his gold company AUX in Bogota, London and Sao Paulo in the next year, in addition to the planned IPO of a Colombian coal-mining business, he said today in an interview at Bloomberg News headquarters in New York. EBX Group Ltd., which controls Batista’s publicly traded companies and he proposed selling last year, is “never going public,” Batista said.
Batista will invest about $100 million in Ventana Gold Corp. and may consider buying more assets before selling shares in the company. Ventana, based in Vancouver with assets in Colombia, is worth at least $4.5 billion compared with the valuation of C$1.54 billion ($1.58 billion) based on Batista’s unsolicited offer, Batista said.
“The reason why we bought Ventana is that I see that the assets are three times bigger than what people who owned it thought it was,” Batista said.
Batista, who bought his first gold mine at age 24, controls 91 percent of Ventana as of March 3 after winning an unsolicited offer for the company. He also plans to raise as much as $1.5 billion in an initial sale of CCX, as the Colombian coal unit is known.
Two Companies
“Now I have two new companies that are going to go public in a year from now,” he said.
Batista said he also aims to list all five of his Sao Paulo-traded companies in London to help lure more international investors.
Shares of Batista’s MMX Mineracao e Metalicos SA rose 3.9 percent today to 9.6 reais and are down 14.5 percent this year. OSX Brasil SA jumped 4.2 percent to 524 reais and is up 8.5 percent this year.
OGX Petroleo e Gas Participacoes SA advanced 0.9 percent to 19.05 reais and have dropped 4.8 percent this year. LLX Logistica SA climbed 3.8 percent to 4.61 reais and lost 2.5 percent this year. MPX Energia SA gained almost 2 percent to 37.20 reais and is up 41.2 percent this year.
The benchmark Bovespa index is down 3 percent so far this year.
--With assistance from Margaret Brennan in New York. Editors: Laura Zelenko.
To contact the reporter on this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto in Rio de Janeiro at jspinetto@bloomberg.net Fabiola Moura in New York at fdemoura@bloomberg.net;
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at dcrofts@bloomberg.net
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-14/batista-plans-ipo-of-colombia-gold-unit-abandons-ebx-sale.html
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http://newsblaze.com/story/20110201070132zzzz.nb/topstory.html
Wellington West Senior Analyst
Paolo Lostritto: I've only submitted one pick this year, and it's a company that exited 2010 with some challenges. And it's in light of those challenges that I think there's tremendous value and opportunity going forward. My top pick was Victoria Gold Corp. (TSX.V:VIT). At the tail end of last year, Victoria had to retract a portion of its resource statement in Nevada. Data was incorrectly entered into the database by their consultants. Unfortunately, the error was caught after it was published. It was a bit embarrassing, but we are not too concerned.
We think there's an opportunity because the drilling at the Cove Project in Nevada was never tight enough to suggest that we had a great understanding of the mineralized system at depth. Victoria really had only enough information to justify constructing an exploration ramp. Victoria Gold's plan of operations has been approved by the Bureau of Land Management. Consequently, the company is now in the short strokes of finalizing their required permits before driving the ramp in the first quarter of this year, with the hope of getting first pre-production by the third quarter.
In addition to that, there is Victoria's Eagle Project in the Yukon. The prefeasibility study on Eagle was less than well received, but what most people don't realize is that the pit walls were designed using a 30-degree slope. The rock qualities have since been tested and may justify using a pit slope of 40 or maybe even 50 degrees. Under that scenario, significantly more mineralization would fall in the pit design, and that would have a huge positive impact on the project's internal rate of return.
Those are two big value drivers and there are several "blue sky" exploration targets that are not priced into the stock.
The Gold Report: You're saying Victoria is going to build this underground ramp at Cove to get to the mineralized ore at depth and that we could see some gold production in the third quarter?
Paolo Lostritto: It will take roughly six months to get there, and the company will do two things once it gets underground. One, it will conduct advanced exploration drilling in order to understand the deposit dimensions and ideally expand the resource. Secondly, it will be able to "teaspoon" some of that material, roughly 400 tons per day, and ship it to one of the local smelters. There are three smelters in the area; one is owned by Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE:ABX; TSX:ABX), one by Newmont Mining Corp. (NYSE:NEM), and another by Yukon-Nevada Gold Corp. (TSX:YNG). I think there's enough competition there for 19-gram gold material to suggest that Victoria has a pretty good chance of securing an off-take agreement. As a result, we believe Victoria Gold should be ready to snap back in 2011.
DEALTALK-Brazil's Batista may need to bid up Ventana
* Latest offer is 4th attempt by Batista to buyout Ventana
* Deal more difficult to get done under hostile conditions
* Ventana says it has other interested parties
* Stock price trading at C$12.60 per share
By Pav Jordan
TORONTO, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista - whose ambition it is to become the world's richest man - may need to sweeten his hostile bid to buy Ventana Gold Corp (VEN.TO), and not just for fear of a rival bidder.
Batista, who last year jumped to 8th place on Forbes list of the world's wealthiest, has offered C$12.63 a share for the 80 percent of Vancouver-based Ventana that he does not own, valuing the company at about C$1.5 billion ($1.5 billion).
Ventana, which owns the promising La Bodega gold property in Colombia, insists the bid is too low. Indeed, Batista himself was offering $13.06 a share in a friendly offer that was rejected before he went hostile in November.
The company says other parties have shown interest since the hostile offer was made public, though no firm bids have surfaced yet.
In what may indicate the market is not expecting a higher bid to emerge, the share price has slipped below the offer value, and traded at C$12.60 a share on Friday.
For Batista, the arithmetic is challenging. He needs two-thirds of the shares tendered, in addition to the 20 percent he owns, or a total of nearly 87 percent. With directors and officers owning 15.5 percent, and the board recommending against the bid, the numbers don't add up.
To be sure, he could settle for a simple majority but that would preclude him from squeezing out the rest of any holdouts and taking full control of Ventana.
"As time goes on and no deal is coming through, then it gets back to the bid price," said Michael Fowler, senior mining analyst at Loewen, Ondaatje, McCutcheon in Toronto.
Ventana and Batista, its largest shareholder, have haggled over the company's valuation for years.
"There have been multiple times that we've engaged in collaborative discussions on how they might be able to acquire the asset," Ventana Chief Executive Stephen Orr told Reuters this week. "We never were able to come to terms on valuation."
Gold mining is booming in Colombia. With stability prevailing after years of internal strife, the country has became an attractive destination for foreign capital.
Ventana's La Bodega mine could become one of the first significant mines in Colombia's nascent gold rush, with initial annual output of 300,000 ounces. But production won't start for years.
As for La Bodega's inherent value, there are still plenty of questions that won't get resolved until the completion of a feasibility study.
"Ventana itself is advanced, but it's not advanced-advanced. It's not advanced right up towards the feasibility study," Fowler said.
"So there's a lot of risk involved going through to that stage. Is the metallurgy going to be OK? Where are you going to put the mill? How are they going to develop it? There's a lot of unknowns."
DETERMINATION
Batista, one of Brazil's best-known personalities, has been trying to buy Ventana for years, determined to add it to his global portfolio of mining and oil properties.
In November 2009, he made a private offer for C$12 a share plus stock, Ventana says. Last February, he offered Ventana shareholders C$10 a share plus stock in a new company. On Nov. 16, the day before making his hostile bid, he proposed a friendly, C$13.06-a-share deal.
"I've thought for some time that the longer this process drags on, the more likely this gets consummated with some sort of a hike from Eike," said a shareholder who could not to be quoted by name due to company policy.
Batista, who has long said he wants to be the world's richest person, made the latest bid through AUX Canada Acquisition Inc, created for that sole purpose. The name bears the ubiquitous 'X' of all Batista-controlled companies, representing his intention to multiply his wealth.
With 66 2/3 percent of the shares plus Batista's own needed to carry the day, getting the hostile deal done might prove difficult regardless of price.
"He showed his willingness to pay above $13 before, so the most likely outcome is that he raises and gets it done at something above his current offer," said the shareholder.
Batista could not be reached for comment, but AUX has said it has no intention to raise its bid.
($1=$1 Canadian dollar)
(Additional reporting by Julie Gordon)
(Reporting by Pav Jordan; Editing by Frank McGurty)
Just had a good friend send me this - re Eike. What do you think?
el d
This is a nice mention:
Victoria Gold proposes new mine
Wednesday January 5, 2011
By John Thompson
Courtesy of Victoria Gold Corp.
If Victoria Gold Corp. has its way, an open-pit gold mine will open near Mayo by 2013.
Last month the Toronto-based company submitted a proposal to the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board to mine its Eagle Gold deposit. It’s part of Victoria Gold’s Dublin Gulch property, found 85 kilometres northeast of Mayo.
Eagle Gold deposit has an indicated resource of 2.7 million ounces of gold. The company reckons it’s sitting on enough paydirt to operate a mine for at least eight years.
And, as the company continues to make new finds with its drillwork at the site, “we think it’ll be there a lot longer,” said Chad Williams, Victoria Gold’s president and CEO.
If a mine materializes, it could employ up to 400 people. But that’s still far from a certainty, as the proposal must still wend its way through the territory’s regulatory system. Williams aims to see the project clear all hurdles over the next 18 months.
Victoria Gold plans to extract the gold by dousing giant piles of ore with cyanide. The method, called a heap leach, was used by the former Brewery Creek mine near Dawson City.
Much excitement has been generated over the past two years about new gold discoveries at the White Gold district near Dawson City and the Rau property near Keno City. But these finds, however promising, have several years of drillwork ahead of them before their gold resources are firmly sized-up.
Dublin Gulch, by comparison, is at a more advanced stage of exploration. The Eagle Gold deposit was first found about 25 years ago.
The slump in gold prices during the late 1990s put this work on hold under Victoria Gold’s predecessor. Skyrocketing gold prices have given the project new urgency.
An economic report prepared by Victoria Gold in the spring of 2010 foresaw production costs of $503 per ounce. As long as gold prices stay aloft – this week, the metal’s price floated at $1,380 per ounce – the company ought to enjoy fat profit margins.
If the project proceeds, “it’ll be the largest gold mine in the history of the Yukon,” said Williams. “There are no other gold deposits in the Yukon that come close to our size.”
For now, Victoria Gold is upgrading its camp, replacing tents with trailers and expanding the number of bunks to hold up to 100 people. This bigger, more permanent camp ought to help the company extend the length of its exploration programs, said Williams.
“Hopefully we can drill virtually year round. As you know, January and February aren’t the friendliest, weather-wise, up there. So it’ll be the best as humanly possible.”
Victoria Gold spent $5 million on exploration in 2010. This year’s exploration program will be “at least that,” said Williams, “perhaps substantially more.”
The proposed mine would cost $250 million. Part of that money would be raised through revenues from another mine owned by the company in Nevada.
Victoria Gold’s largest shareholder also has deep pockets. It’s Kinross, one of Canada’s biggest gold producers.
Other than permitting, the other big challenge the company faces is obtaining a “social licence,” as Williams calls it, from the Na-Cho Nyak Dun.
About one year ago, the company struck a memorandum of understanding with the First Nation. And last autumn, the company flew aboriginal elders to Kinross’ Fort Knox open-pit gold mine, located near Fairbanks, to show them what a modern-day gold mine looks like.
The two parties are now seeking to reach an impact-benefit agreement, which typically guarantees the First Nation a share of the jobs and profits.
Contact John Thompson at johnt@yukon-news.com
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