I think Mr Koroma was more "impressed" with Frank as he needs to speed up investment esp. in infrastructure projects as the elections are in less than 2yrs. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Top potential investors meet as President Koroma expresses confidence in African Minerals.
Written by Ahmed M Kamara in Breaking News on September 29, 2010
African Minerals (SL) Limited has held a successful meeting with potential investors from different reputable backgrounds abroad. The team was accompanied to Sierra Leone by AMLs top executives who took them to the companys flagship iron ore project in Tonkolili. The delegation was later received by President Ernest Bai Koroma who expressed confidence in the operations of AML and assured them of his government and peoples support to genuine investors from all over the world.
photo: President Koroma meeting potential investors
The companies include BlackRock, Capital Research which is part of the Capital Group Companies, M&G, Mirabuad, GLG Partners, UBS Investment Bank, Credit Issues, Brevan Howard, and Alliance Bernstein. Among the visiting representatives were BlackRocks Managing Director, Hugo Tudor and Senior Vice President, Mark Denning. The firm is one of the worlds pre-eminent asset management firms and a premier provider of global investment management, risk management and advisory services to institutional investors around the world. It has offices in 24 countries with over 8,500 employees. As of December 2009 BlackRocks assets under management totalled US$ 3.35 trillion.
M&G (represented by Tom Dohell, the Director of Equities) ALLIANCE BERNSTEIN (represented by Dave Robinson, the Director) BREVAN HOWARD (represented by Carl Linderium). Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP is a privately owned investment management Comapny and one of the largest hedge funds in Europe. CREDIT SUISSE (represented by James McGeoch) UBS INVESTMENT BANK (represented by MATTHEW WHITTAL, Steel/M&M Specialist Sales) GLG PARTNERS (represented by Carl Esprey). GLG Partners Inc. is a publicly owned hedge fund sponsor. MIRABUAD (represented by Pav Sanghera, the Head of Equity Sales)
African Minerals posts an interim after-tax loss of $31.5m for the six months to the end of June - up from $5.1m last time. It said the financial performance mainly reflected expenditure on the development of the company's iron ore assets in Sierra Leone. Total assets amounted to approximately $599m (2009: $157m). The company had cash and short-term investments of $336m at the end of June (2009: $9.6m). Executive chairman Frank Timis said African Minerals had made outstanding progress at its flagship Tonkolili iron ore project, establishing an exceptionally strong base from which to develop what it believes will be Africa's largest iron ore mining operation.
He added: "Support from the Ggvernment of Sierra Leone, strategic partnership with the People's Republic of China, and the ongoing confidence of our shareholders have enabled African Minerals to initiate its three phase development strategy in order to bring Tonkolili into production by Q4 2011."
(20min delay)