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Sam 20 Mar 2010 09:03
How First Quantum slowly but surely beats off the fixers
Some of the world's more savage stock market stories are going to end up in jungle hostels packed with sadists.
Author: Barry Sergeant
Posted: Friday , 19 Mar 2010
JOHANNESBURG -
He insisted that his name was Prince Marvelous, and, to be sure, he had the attitude of a man who fears nothing. Prince Marvelous has nine wives and so he indeed must be truly fearless. His palace stands just off a dusty but solid laterite road just before the Lonshi border crossing between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Prince Marvelous has every reason to believe that he is standing atop a gigantic un-mined copper-cobalt deposit that could one day underpin his ascendancy to the throne of the King of Africa. The Prince could be right. He is standing at the southern end of the Central African Copperbelt, which extends some 500km through Zambia and into the DRC's Katanga province. The belt is around 50km in width.
The copperbelt hosts one of the world's greatest contiguous mineral deposits, and many decades ago, settlements like Ndola and Kitwe in Zambia, and Lubumbashi across the border, were among the wealthiest in the world. After independence decades ago, mines on both sides of the border were nationalized, and then slowly looted, pilfered and finally systematically ruined. - Barry Sergeant, 11 August, 2006.
That story - there was more - was lashed together after a field trip; I can still see the prince's face as if it was yesterday - a big, gleaming, shiny, happy face, covered with specks of dust from the laterite road that carved his village of wives in half. Today we are dealing with the company in that field trip being blitzed for USD 12bn in a jungle court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is no joke, but that's what happened to First Quantum, one of the world's top 10 copper miners, on 23 February 2010. The matter is on appeal; getting a handle on this "case" takes a couple of minutes.
Let's leave aside most of the names of the fixers, pushers, hucksters and gunsels who populate the mining battlefield in the Congo; most of them are very nasty, and will fall by the wayside in due course, to be replaced by new players, leaving the bigger, grim canvas as intact as ever. This is about the big picture. Things in Africa are changing - and staying the same - and reversing, the most natural direction on the continent. Georges-Antoine Kurtz, the antihero of Joseph Conrad's timeless little novel, would be impressed; forget about turning in his grave, he could by now be doing a dance on a pogo stick.
Later this year, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is going to celebrate 50 years of independence from its scurvy colonial menace, Belgium. We are talking about half a century, which can be considered a fairly good stretch of time to use to develop a country which offers up a collection of some of the world's most coveted natural resources. This is not a wise time to try and shove an entire Panzer division down First Quantum's throat.
The DRC will be celebrating independence as a shadow of what it was 50 years ago, when it ranked as one of the world's more prosperous economies, thanks mainly to the enormous weight of copper cranking out of Katanga Province. Here were some of the world's biggest, and highest grade, copper mines, also blessed with rich deposits of a minor metal, cobalt. The deposits are still there. Decades ago, the Belgians built huge, overcapitalized mines, and oversized hydroelectric facilities for power supplies.
Copper is a bulk product, and the only way to really move it efficiently in huge tonnages is by rail. So the Belgians built railways from Katanga junction; they built endless railways like a spider's web creation from a little boy's fantasy. The steel snakes went out forever, like the future of the world depended on it, spanning out in all directions, sometimes all the way to the sea, sometimes joining lines already built in other countries, west to Benguela port in Angola, east to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Beira in Mozambique, and south to Lusaka, Bulawayo and onto Johannesburg and on to other ports such as Maputo and Durban. Southern Katanga Province pumped; to the north east, Bukavu, on Lake Kivu in the Kivu provinces, was coveted as Africa's Riviera.
On Bukavu's prettiest peninsula- one of five, known as "God's hand" - you could have found the Hôtel Lantana House, the Hôtel Léopold II, the Métropole and the Hôtel Résidence, along with the Hôtel Crémaillère, the Hôtel Touriste and the Hôtel Rotonde, plus elegant restaurants and clubs, La Taverne Royale, Au Gourmet, the Restaurant L'Ecu de France, La Bonbonnière, Le Panaché, and Le Caveau. There were thriving dealerships for Dodge, Volvo, Fiat, Ford, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Mercedes, Nash-Hudson, Studebaker, Citroën and Renault. And the cinemas - the Paguidas, Cinéma Roxy, the Palace, and pretty things, the pensionnat, the hippodrome, La Flamme, and the famous Avenue de Royale along the lakeside. Those were the days, all right.
Today, the railways lie quiet, like dead steel super snakes killed by an apocalyptic nuclear hellfroth. The copper mines were also murdered, but that took longer. The DRC was independent in 1960; after five years of extreme instability, a new president that would reign for nearly 32 years emerged in the form of Mobutu Sese Seko Koko Ngbendu wa za Banga (the all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake). With zero recognition that capital had to be constantly reinvested in capital-eating mining activities, Mobutu set about looting the country's mines, which were as tough as any mines ever built. The country's copper output eventually peaked at more than 500,000 tons in 1975, before starting a precipitous fall to 200,000 tons at the beginning of the 1990s, and then falling to less than 40,000 tons a year by the end of Mobutu's reign in 1997.
Two civil wars followed, where an estimated 5m people lost their lives. Across the border, Zambia had gained independence on 24 October 1964; it nationalised its mines, but with some compensation. The Zambian copper mines also went into a long term death dance. The modern regeneration of the Zambian copperbelt has been relatively normal, but in the DRC, the Mobutu era left a stranded elite that had become accustomed to sights such as large Boeings flying into Kinshasa, the DRC capital, laden with booty, such as soda pops, all destined for Mobutu. There were fancy residences in Europe to maintain, along with mistresses, and all that goes with a bling lifestyle financed by plundering the fine assets that the dreadful colonizers had left behind. Today, there are also fine some fine residences, some that look like hotels, in Johannesburg. These also demand heavy duty maintenance.
Signs of privatisation on the copperbelt were seen in the mid-1990s, when in 1996 Canada- and London-listed First Quantum acquired Zambia's ruined Bwana Mkubwa, worked on and off since discovery in 1902. Bwana and its facilities were considered worthless to the point that the Zambian government said First Quantum could have the entire wreck for a song. Bwana exhausted its own ore reserves by mid-2002, but from that small beginning, First Quantum continued attracting Western capital back into the central African copperbelt, to emerge less than a decade later as one of the Top Ten copper miners in the world.
The DRC jungle court, where interested parties recently attempted to blitz First Quantum with a "damages" claim of USD 12bn is one way of saying "thank you for the effort". It's a lot of money, and counterintuitive, considering that First Quantum has to date invested more money in the copperbelt than any other modern company. Back in the 1990s, it needed little in the way of grey matter for the DRC to understand that its brownfields copperbelt could be refurbished. The challenge was that public sector money was absent, and that meant creating an atmosphere attractive to private enterprise. But the derelict DRC elite, left stranded after Mobutu croaked in Rabat, Morocco, on 7 September 1997, were not going to let any foreign capital have a free ride, if they could help it; there were going to be skims off the top. The schemes that have been implemented to this effect are sometimes quite cunning - at first glance, anyway.
Some grubby sub-stories are worth dribbling around, at the very least to examine how a small pack of fiends manage to continually get away with fixing mining deals in the DRC. It's as if each of these gentlemen had their Christmas presents stolen when they were children, and, left with deep psychological scars, have been obsessed with hunting down riches ever since, but only riches that can be obtained in the most distasteful and foul ways. For years now, this pack of unsavoury gentlemen have used various devices, including courts in the DRC, to hijack mining assets, in particular. These characters tend to work in a kind of chain sequence, overlapping and then disappearing and another continuing where the other leaves off, ensuring, in the main, that detection of a "smoking gun" kind is exceptionally difficult. When the interested party steps back, the bigger picture can be seen. This is where even Kurtz could have considered himself outclassed
Take Toronto-listed Africo, which in April 2007 had every reason to believe that it held 75% of Kalukundi in southern Katanga Province, with State-owned mining company La Générale des carrières et des mines, or Gécamines, holding the other 25%. Africo's intention was to fully fund and fast-track Kalukundi, one of the world's richest copper-cobalt deposits, albeit medium-sized, into production by 2008-2009, with initial targets of 16,400 tonnes of copper and 3,800 tonnes of cobalt a year, off an initial reserve base of 7.8m tonnes. Africo raised CAD 20m in a private placement in December 2006, just prior to its successful listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange; steps were immediately taken to raise the balance of the total estimated capital cost of CAD 210m to build the mine. Anticipated profit margins and near-term cashflow held out the prospect of payback within four years. Speedy payback times are one of the main reasons Western capital has been ready to risk itself in the Congo. The prospect of a shorter term payback, before the next shittrain crashes the station, is bright enough.
As a new mine, Kalukundi would create more than 500 jobs - more than 80% of those to be filled by Congolese citizens - with substantial resources earmarked for infrastructural development and community investment, in housing, health and education. But the belly dragging human hyenas pounced onto this one quickly enough. In April 2007, just months after listing, Africo became aware of a court decision out of Lubumbashi, capital of Katanga Province, that had accepted a claim by a company called Akam, which had mysteriously acquired a 75% interest in Swanmines, the entity that owns 75% of Kalukundi, for USD 600,000 at a sale in execution. All this happened behind Africo's back. The sale in execution followed a Lubumbashi court judgment obtained against Africo by a former employee, Alejandro Berardone, for the payment of damages of USD 3m relating to Africo's "non-renewal of his employment contract", a judgment Africo was already in the process of appealing. Africo was given no prior notice of the hearings and had in its possession a termination of employment contract dated 19 July 2005. There, Berardone agreed to accept certain payments and other benefits in full and final settlement of his contract with Africo.
Alejandro Berardone, born in Argentina, held Argentinean and Uruguayan passports, and apparently an Italian passport as well. In the Lubumbashi courts, Judge Laurent Kimukedi made the first judgment in favour of Berardone, according to the labour laws, awarding him around USD 30,000. This judgment pre-dated the other judges' USD 3m judgment. In the DRC, a maximum of three years' pay may be ordered to be paid in a labour dispute. The USD 3m judgment implied that Berardone earned USD 1m a year, which was completely false. To boot, Berardone knew and knows nothing about mining.
Three Lubumbashi judges were sued for judicial misconduct in the Supreme Court, Kinshasa, over the Berardone/Akam attempted swindle of Africo: Judge Mungange "Jimmy" Muyambo, president of the Lubumbashi Court, Judge Leon Inyongo Mboyo, and Judge Christian Kalumba Ilunga. At the hearing on 27 July 2007, the three Lubumbashi judges were represented by lawyers Herve Ngoy-Kalumba Banza and Roger Masamba, the same lawyers who had represented both Berardone and Akam in the Lubumbashi Court. On 10 August, the Supreme Court in Kinshasa found that it could not take a stance on the motion of judicial misconduct, because the Berardone judgment and the Akam decision had taken the form of 'orders' and not 'judgments'. With that kind of swill from a higher court, Africo looked like dead meat. Africo's stock price had halved since listing, rendering it vulnerable to takeover.
On 21 April 2008, Camrose Resources, a company incorporated under the laws of the British Virgin Islands, announced that it was going to take up fresh equity in Africo; a CAD 100m cash injection would give it a 51% stake. At the same time, via Kigala International, Camrose agreed to buy all the outstanding shares of Akam, which agreed to capitulate and hand over whatever it had. For its pains, Camrose was issued another 5.4m Africo shares, at a deemed price of CAD 2.50 a share. For an apparent cost of CAD 13.5m, the Akam problem went on permanent walkabouts. If all went according to apparent plans, including warrants activated by the CAD 100m cash injection, Camrose would end up with an indirect controlling stake of 71% of Africo, for a visible cash cost of CAD 100m. This was a bargain, considering that the metals contained in the Kalukundi deposit are worth billions of dollars, if and when mined.
As for Berardone, he bought a property in Uruguay's Colonia del Sacramento, listed as World Heritage. Berardone's pad is two blocks from the Historic Quarter of Barrio Historico. As for Judge Mungange "Jimmy" Muyambo, word is that he was removed from office by order of his minister and relocated to a backwater office in Kinshasa. It has been said that for years, he has been as mad as a snake set on fire.
The high fliers - those that cruise around the DRC in bling jet aircraft - have other ways of milking big loot out of the system. Canada- and London-listed Katanga Mining, as it stands today, holds the historic Kamoto mine, and what's known as "KOV" - the Kamoto East, Oliveira, Virgule and FNSR orebodies. In years gone by, the mining operations here were developed as one massive and contiguous enterprise. Under nationalisation, the area was turned into one of the biggest scrap yards on earth, with hundreds of tonnes of steel and other junk littered across a landscape that would have been given a discount for taking up a show space in hell. Upon privatisation, the operation was split into two; KOV and adjacent assets went to Nikanor; Kamoto and associated assets went to the original Katanga Mining. It was clear to anyone with intelligence at least equal to a rat's that the two would merge, and so they did in early 2008.
Big money had been moved around. When Nikanor listed in London in July 2006, it raised USD 380m in cash, and, in even frothier markets, USD 777m a year later. Upon the business combination of Nikanor and Katanga Mining, USD 446m in cash was returned to Nikanor shareholders. There is no secret as to the identities of the three major Nikanor shareholders at the closure of the deal. JP Morgan Cazenove, pushers of the Nikanor float, were keen to remind investors that the KOV deposits boast one of the highest-grade major copper ore bodies in the world, with 172m tons of indicated mineral resources at an astonishing grade of 5.09% copper, plus a wonderful grade of 0.49% cobalt. Which is all pretty damn good, but the pushers could have completed the story by adding that the rights to KOV were given away to one of the original founding shareholders of Nikanor for a paltry USD 3m.
But these are diversions. First Quantum's would-be USD 12bn blitzing for "damages" is the story, for now. There is, in First Quantum's words, "an unsupported request for up to USD 12 billion in damages". A finding in the case is yet to be made, but it seems as if the Panzer tank pilots are ganging up for the impossible, given the hundreds of millions that First Quantum has invested in the DRC.
As the biggest overall miner on the central African copperbelt, First Quantum is insistent that it is compliant with the DRC's Mining Code, but in a September 2009 announcement, it confirmed suspension of work at the 75%-complete Kolwezi tailings project, after it was shuttered by government agents. The short background to that is that the DRC decided, not for the first time, to conduct a "revisitation" of contracts awarded to various miners. A number of those miners implemented expeditious tactics to become compliant with the process, but let's not get into the gory detail of "tactics" deployed. The real issue with First Quantum is that it's one of the few companies on the copperbelts that sticks to its knitting. That drives certain people into fits of insanity.
The shutting of Kolwezi tailings, formally known as the Kingamyambo Musonoi Tailings SARL, or KMT, saw some 700 jobs go down the drainpipe, on a project that was lined up to come on stream in May this year. For First Quantum, the carrying value of the KMT development project is USD 787m, being an initial acquisition cost of USD 388m, and capital expenditures, so far, of USD 399m. First Quantum has some heavyweight partners at Kolwezi, the IFC (International Finance Corporation), and IDC (Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa). Together the three hold 82.5% of the project; the DRC government and Gécamines, the balance. The latter two parties have not pitched so much as a penny into the project.
Back to the courts . . . in late November 2009, First Quantum learned that a domestic DRC court had rendered a judgment on 28 October 2009, without First Quantum being present, and without any evidence presented. But no worries, the court concluded on the basis of "no evidence" that there was no clerical error in the decree granting authorization for the constitution of KMT, but rather that there was a formal defect. The Local Court also found without any evidence presented that there was "fraud committed" in the constitution of KMT and held that for this reason KMT "did not exist in law". The court condemned First Quantum and its subsidiaries to cough up USD 3m to Gécamines and its sidekicks, as damages and interest and court costs.
The bashing continued when on 11 January 2010, a First Quantum subsidiary "received a letter from Gécamines advising they were cancelling the Contract of Association". First Quantum apparently lost its sense of humour at this stage; "In the company's view, the Local Court's decision constituted a flagrant denial of justice and this, along with the actions taken by Gécamines to wrongfully cancel the Contract of Association, demonstrated the need for the company to file international arbitration seeking orders obliging the DRC and Gécamines to respect their undertakings and obligations under the Contract of Association".
On February 1 First Quantum announced commencement of international arbitration by First Quantum and its partners in KMT, under the facilities of the International Chamber of Commerce, International Court of Arbitration, in Paris. Not to be outdone, the DRC mines minister in public statements made on 3 February 2010, at the Indaba conference in Cape Town, indicated that "instructions had been given" by the DRC to start negotiations with third parties, in order to create a new Kolwezi partnership.
First Quantum and its partners reacted, this time by publishing notices in certain widely circulated publications advising of valid contractual rights, and the ongoing ICC International Arbitration, warning third parties not to interfere. It is no secret, though this is not mentioned by First Quantum, that certain "entrepreneurs" were jetting around above the jungles, offering to solve the impasse, using a method known politely as "briefcase diplomacy". To think that First Quantum would have fallen for such snake oil would be tantamount to not knowing that the smartest thing the devil ever did was to convince the world that he doesn't exist. The devil, and his little devil pets, lurk large in this story.
In fully resisting the devil and his cohorts, it was on 23 February 2010 that First Quantum, without any prior notice, received from Gécamines a "Notice of Hearing Date", and a hearing less than 24 hours later, on 24 February. This time Gécamines and its sidekicks "requested the confirmation of the Lower Court judgment and also made an unsupported request for up to USD 12bn in damages to be awarded to Gécamines" and CAMI, the DRC Mining Registry. The attempted blitzing is where the story pretty much started, after the appearance of the charming Prince Marvelous, and that is pretty much where it will be ending, for now.
KMT's lawyers attended the latest case and objected to the proceedings. KMT believes a decision of the Local Appeal is imminent; KMT "continues to believe the allegations against KMT and CMD (Congo Mineral Developments, a First Quantum subsidiary), have no merit and intends to vigorously defend against any decision". First Quantum believes that "there is no legal basis for the cancellation of KMT's exploitation permit, the sealing of the KMT facilities, Gécamines's cancellation of the Contract of Association, or the decision of the Local Court, and as previously noted, that CMD and the KMT Project's other contributing partners, the IFC and the IDC, continue to have a valid and binding contract with the DRC and Gécamines".
Good, old fashioned, and honest, private enterprise is a tough bastard to beat. Optimism from that quarter has been flaring up again, after a bunch of gimcrack Wall Street investment bankers almost destroyed the world during 2008. In June 2009, Red Back, an African miner, bid for Moto Gold Mines, holder of a substantial resource in the Congo's north east. The bid was beaten off by a joint effort from Randgold Resources, another African miner, and global gold major AngloGold Ashanti, for what turned out to be CAD 557m. There will be great interest in the upcoming mine build, given that the only significant mining investments in the country in the modern era have been far to the south, in southern Katanga Province. The Moto deposits, since renamed Kibali, were once mined, fairly lightly, by long gone Belgian colonizers
In June 2009 Glencore, a Swiss-based commodities trader and miner, underwrote a USD 250m rights offer for Katanga Mining, effectively taking control with a stake now sitting just below 70%. In August 2009, Trafigura increased its take in Anvil to 39% upon a CAD 200m take up of fresh equity. In January 2010 Rio Tinto signed an exploration venture with tiny diamonds outfit BRC Diamondcore, seeking iron ore in the north east Congo. In March 2010 this year, Freeport-McMoRan, the world's biggest publicly traded copper miner, said it was close to agreeing with the Congolese government on expansions at Tenke Fungurume, where Freeport-McMoRan is 58.8% holder and operator, with Lundin holding 24.8% and Gécamines the balance of 17.5%. Tenke Fungurume represents one of the continent's biggest private sector investments to date; Phase I at Tenke cost USD 1.8bn to build, ranking it a major producer of copper cathode and cobalt concentrate. Freeport has also been pushed around a little in the Congo, but let's not get into that story, not today, anyway.
Under the bling and dazzle that will be rented out for the DRC's independence celebrations, the planet will be reminded that the county practices democracy - nominally at least. Below that veneer, the courts will continue to screech out orders based on "no evidence". Putting it more broadly, "vast humanitarian problems remain", according to MONUC, the UN mission in the DRC. Perhaps the most alarming statement is that 45,000 people die monthly, "1,500 each day, half of them under the age of five - mostly from preventable diseases and dirty water". That's about half a million dead people a year. Nobody gives a hoot, and nobody will be honouring the millions of innocent dead, or the dead innocents, when the independence parties roll into gear later this year.
Selected copper stocks
Stock
From
From
Value
price
high*
low*
USD bn
Freeport-McMoRan
USD 80.27
-11.4%
119.8%
34.561
Southern Copper
USD 31.74
-14.2%
90.5%
26.979
Antofagasta
GBP 10.20
-3.2%
126.3%
15.233
KGHM Polska Miedź
PLN 101.90
-8.5%
138.6%
7.115
Jiangxi Copper
CNY 35.68
-30.1%
83.4%
8.547
Sterlite
USD 17.98
-10.5%
200.7%
15.109
Yunnan Copper
CNY 26.01
-32.7%
58.6%
4.788
Tongling
CNY 18.95
-27.7%
67.7%
3.593
First Quantum
CAD 89.50
-10.8%
175.4%
7.077
Equinox
CAD 3.70
-21.1%
117.6%
2.572
Philex
PHP 13.00
-35.0%
206.6%
1.402
Nautilus Minerals
CAD 2.06
-25.4%
104.0%
0.315
Katanga Mining
CAD 0.73
-40.8%
227.8%
1.368
Quadra
CAD 17.32
-6.7%
272.5%
1.693
Pan Australian
AUD 0.53
-19.2%
152.4%
1.418
Metorex
ZAR 4.04
-24.6%
217.2%
0.415
Palamin
ZAR 110.00
-4.3%
139.1%
0.727
Mercator
CAD 2.70
-22.0%
409.4%
0.517
Anvil
CAD 4.12
-3.5%
368.2%
0.609
Northern Dynasty
CAD 9.38
-8.8%
50.1%
0.860
Taseko
CAD 5.00
-14.4%
303.2%
0.904
Aditya Birla
AUD 1.01
-39.1%
737.5%
0.290
Corriente
CAD 8.52
-0.5%
60.2%
0.631
Fronteer
CAD 5.08
-11.7%
106.5%
0.598
CuDeco
AUD 5.04
-23.5%
172.4%
0.637
Chariot
CAD 0.65
-1.5%
333.3%
0.233
Baja Mining
CAD 0.78
-19.6%
178.6%
0.110
Activex
AUD 0.08
-31.7%
78.3%
0.006
Terrane
CAD 1.10
-44.4%
494.6%
0.138
Hillgrove Resources
AUD 0.39
-25.0%
254.5%
0.173
Havilah Resources
AUD 0.45
-37.3%
36.9%
0.034
Globestar Mining
CAD 1.02
-15.0%
92.5%
0.106
Citadel Resource
AUD 0.40
-15.1%
259.1%
0.532
Amerigo
CAD 0.71
-16.5%
149.1%
0.103
New Gold
CAD 4.65
-10.4%
150.0%
1.777
Tiger Resources
AUD 0.25
-23.4%
172.2%
0.091
Candente
CAD 0.48
-16.7%
183.9%
0.038
African Copper
GBP 0.06
-62.1%
739.3%
0.073
Marengo Mining
AUD 0.12
-52.1%
130.0%
0.053
Inca Pacific
CAD 0.19
-56.3%
18.8%
0.011
Exco Resources
AUD 0.26
-27.1%
211.0%
0.117
Coro
CAD 0.47
-35.6%
308.7%
0.042
Discovery Metals
AUD 0.73
-13.6%
421.4%
0.155
Africo
CAD 0.95
-36.2%
79.2%
0.066
Prairie Downs
AUD 0.17
-34.6%
188.1%
0.011
Duluth Metals
CAD 2.25
-43.6%
1116.2%
0.213
Polymet Mining
CAD 2.39
-38.6%
191.5%
0.350
African Eagle
GBP 0.04
-65.0%
94.4%
0.020
El Nino Ventures
CAD 0.09
-48.6%
63.6%
0.006
Seabridge
CAD 22.82
-35.7%
9.1%
0.844
Augusta Resources
USD 2.70
-25.2%
134.8%
0.239
Rambler Metals
GBP 0.34
-10.5%
231.7%
0.031
Norsemont Mining
CAD 2.30
-12.5%
94.9%
0.181
Apoquindo Minerals
CAD 0.93
-15.5%
210.0%
0.047
Capstone Mining
CAD 3.07
-7.0%
114.7%
0.594
Imperial Metals
CAD 16.18
-4.4%
467.7%
0.546
Pacific Booker
CAD 7.20
-14.8%
44.0%
0.081
Nevada Copper
CAD 3.32
-7.0%
1343.5%
0.147
Avanco Resources
AUD 0.03
-38.6%
350.0%
0.013
Finders Resources
AUD 0.20
-20.4%
66.0%
0.034
Polar Star Mining
CAD 1.20
-24.5%
471.4%
0.083
Hana Mining
CAD 1.84
-15.6%
820.0%
0.107
Benguet
PHP 12.25
-32.9%
100.8%
0.025
Continental Minerals
CAD 2.19
-8.0%
461.5%
0.329
Bezant Resources
GBP 0.33
-19.5%
371.4%
0.023
Kobex
CAD 1.00
-14.5%
60.3%
0.052
Cornerstone Capital
CAD 0.13
-35.9%
212.5%
0.010
Thundermin
CAD 0.15
-37.5%
57.9%
0.011
Western Copper
CAD 1.71
-24.0%
388.6%
0.133
Averages/total
-15.6%
157.6%
145.948
Weighted averages
-15.3%
121.8%
Diversifieds with copper
Stock
From
From
Value
price
high*
low*
USD bn
BHP Billiton
GBP 22.13
-1.6%
73.6%
207.587
Vale
USD 30.05
-6.0%
132.8%
158.926
Rio Tinto
GBP 37.19
-2.2%
143.3%
132.170
Anglo American
GBP 27.42
-7.4%
154.4%
54.684
Xstrata
GBP 11.80
-9.4%
201.0%
52.536
Norilsk
USD 16.98
-3.6%
190.3%
32.369
Teck
USD 40.76
-2.7%
816.0%
23.632
Vedanta
GBP 26.97
-9.1%
370.7%
11.071
NFC
CNY 14.04
-37.4%
44.1%
1.314
Lundin
CAD 4.93
-6.3%
294.4%
2.808
Kazakhmys
GBP 15.16
-3.0%
389.0%
12.292
Ivanhoe
CAD 16.42
-11.2%
198.0%
6.872
Inmet
CAD 58.71
-24.7%
100.2%
3.237
Northgate
CAD 3.15
-14.9%
112.8%
0.900
Oz Minerals
AUD 1.17
-12.1%
158.9%
3.349
Hindalco
INR 174.85
-2.8%
300.1%
7.358
Mwana Africa
GBP 0.11
-40.8%
238.7%
0.063
EMED Mining
GBP 0.11
-28.6%
210.3%
0.058
Boliden
CAD 13.66
-12.6%
178.8%
3.671
Xinjiang Xinxin
CNY 4.53
-18.7%
114.7%
0.443
Ivanhoe Australia
AUD 3.61
-14.9%
684.8%
1.066
Minera Andes
CAD 1.00
-4.8%
75.4%
0.258
CGA Mining
AUD 2.10
-18.9%
54.4%
0.640
Asia Now
CAD 0.30
-22.4%
268.8%
0.019
Kefi Minerals
GBP 0.02
-33.3%
40.0%
0.007
Iberian Minerals
CAD 0.48
-22.6%
41.2%
0.159
Sandfire Resources
AUD 3.72
-15.3%
6426.3%
0.416
Orocobre
AUD 2.38
-2.9%
900.0%
0.177
Orvana Minerals
CAD 1.07
-12.3%
78.3%
0.121
Straits Resources
AUD 1.32
-38.8%
41.0%
0.310
Highlands Pacific
AUD 0.26
-35.8%
372.7%
0.158
Kagara
AUD 0.85
-35.6%
193.1%
0.528
Averages/total
-16.0%
424.9%
719.199
Weighted averages
-4.7%
130.7%
* 12-month
Source: market data; table compiled by Barry Sergeant
http://www.mineweb.co.za/mineweb/view/m ... tail&pid=1
