re: Ann: Mr Alexander Molyneux Appointed Exec...
I know no one will read this but this is big news. Getting Alex Molyneux in has been part of the plan for a year now (from the vendor) and is a great achievement. Alex has already taken a coal company from nothing in nowhere to $1.8 BILLION. He has the experience and contacts that make this kind of thing work. JORC expected about March. Expect a jump in SP then cap raising before the real action starts.
Celsius chief's move from Mongolia to new resources hot spot
BEING hand-picked by famed billionaire entrepreneur Robert Friedland to run his Mongolian coalmining business was, understandably, a life-changing experience for Alex Molyneux. When the then 32-year-old investment banking wunderkind was chosen by Friedland in 2009 to run SouthGobi Resources, it put him at the forefront of Mongolia's resources boom.
But it also set him on a path to become one of the higher-profile casualties of Mongolia's difficult transition into global resources hot spot. Molyneux parted ways with SouthGobi earlier this year after a controversial Chinese takeover bid for the company collapsed.
Now the Australian-born, Hong Kong-based executive has chosen Australian Securities Exchange-listed explorer Celsius Coal as the vehicle through which he aims to make up for unfinished business at SouthGobi.
Yesterday Molyneux was appointed executive chairman of Celsius, charged with turning the $30 million minnow and its basket of early stage coal assets in Kyrgyzstan into a significant coal player. He views Kyrgyzstan, which abuts China's west, as similar to Mongolia in terms of resource potential but offering significant advantages in infrastructure and attitudes towards foreign investment.
Based on what he has seen of Celsius's early stage assets so far, Molyneux believes the company has the attributes to rival Mongolian Mining Corporation, a $1.8 billion company listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. A study of old geological data compiled by Soviet geologists suggests Celsius's acreage hosts premium hard coking coal that would be particularly attractive to Chinese buyers.
``Celsius has better coal quality than Mongolian Mining; it's closer to China than Mongolian Mining; and it's also in a country that's less fearful of foreign investment and interacting with Chinese (than Mongolia),'' Molyneux told The Australian.
It's clear Molyneux is disappointed by the way SouthGobi's fortunes in Mongolia unfolded.
While SouthGobi was once a poster child for Mongolia's coal potential, climbing to as high as $HK130 a share as investors scrambled to be part of the Mongolia story, its share price started to sag earlier this year as the difficulties of mining in the country hit home.
An $US890m ($851m) takeover bid from Chinese giant Chinalco looked set to provide a happy ending to the SouthGobi story, but authorities in Mongolia -- a country that has long watched its neighbour with deep suspicion -- recoiled at the prospect of the company falling into Chinese hands and effectively stripped SouthGobi of its key assets.
The company now trades at about $HK15 a share, with its market capitalisation at just $350m.
Molyneux says Mongolia's ferocious national pride and fear of the outside world is jeopardising its chances of making the most of its natural resources.
``That (patriotism) creates this fear of everything foreign, whether it's Chinese or not, and there's a paranoia of everything foreign in Mongolia before you even get to the concerns about the Chinese,'' he says. Despite Molyneux's concerns about the direction of Mongolia, he talks down the significance of the recent situation involving one of his former employees, Australian lawyer Sarah Armstrong.
Armstrong has been barred from leaving Mongolia as she is being questioned by anti-corruption investigators.
``We have a different basic starting block for civil liberties,'' he says. ``But all these former Soviet countries have these means whereby they can say: `I need you because I may want to interview you some time in the next few weeks, so you can't leave the country.' It's not nice for her because she has lost her freedom to be home, but I think it will be resolved in the right way.''
Molyneux remains in regular contact with Friedland, the highly successful entrepreneur behind the multi-billion-dollar Oyu Tolgoi and Voisey's Bay mining projects, and he sits on the board of Friedland's oil and gas business Ivanhoe Energy.
Working with Friedland in the early days of SouthGobi was, he says, an amazing experience. ``I had the opportunity to access his Rolodex and learn from the kind of people you meet when you're hanging around with Robert.''
CLA Price at posting:
1.7¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
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