February 16, 2010The New Chief Executive Of Hong Kong Investment...

February 16, 2010

The New Chief Executive Of Hong Kong Investment Company Apac Resources Is A Once-Familiar Face In London.

By Charles Wyatt / www.minesite.com

It was interesting to read last week that Metals X, the Australian company - not to be confused with Metals Exploration on Aim - has just acquired a 19.9 per cent holding in Jabiru Metals. Metals X acquired a total of 136.7 million shares from Consolidated Copper, which is owned by the old Consolidated Minerals which in turn is now part of Palmary Enterprises. Apparently, Palmary is under pressure from a fee due to JP Morgan, so the shares were crossed last Friday. Apac Resources, the Hong Kong investment company, was the hidden hand acting behind Metals Xs purchase.

Metals X is Australias largest tin producer, producing approximately 2.5 per cent of the global supply from its Mt Bischoff and Renison mines and processing plant in Tasmania. It also owns the Wingellina nickel project which boasts a global resource of over 180 million tonnes of nickel. The first phase of feasibility was completed in 2008, and worked on a premise of a 40,000 tonnes per year nickel and 3,500 tonnes per year cobalt operation with a 40 year mine life. Metals X also has a wider portfolio of strategic investments with exposure to gold, copper, lead, zinc, phosphate and tungsten.

For its part, Jabiru commissioned the Jaguar copper and zinc mine in 2008, after overcoming a number of mechanical challenges with the Jaguar concentrator. The Jaguar operation has gone on to perform exceptionally well, with revenue exceeding targets. Jabiru also owns the Stockman project in East Gippsland, Victoria, a project on which it has completed a scoping study. A pre-feasibility study is now underway. And earlier this month the company was granted a mining lease over the Bentley massive sulphide deposit, contiguous with Jaguar, and development here is expected to start during the June quarter.

A shrewd moment for Metals X to get involved, then, and it would appear that the initiative came from Apac Resources which has a 29 per cent holding in the company. Jinchuan is also in there with 13 per cent so the Chinese also have a strong hand. News of this deal reminded Minews that an old friend of his, Andrew Ferguson, was appointed chief executive of Apac only a few weeks ago. Andrew is an aimiable character who towers over most people and was a great friend of Sacha Borthwick, the late and much lamented London-based mining analyst who produced what amounted to the bible on uranium exploration before he died in 2007.

Its not too often that a westerner gets to run what is very much a Chinese company so it is worth reminding readers that Andrew knows his way around this business like few others. He worked in Australia as a mining engineer for a couple of years after graduating, so he knows his way around that part of the world. He has a proven track record in fund management, and was the former co-fund manager of City Natural Resources High Yield Trust. City Natural Resources was taken over by leading hedge fund manager CQS in 2007, and Andrew was subsequently its man in Hong Kong.

Due to the nature of this job, he acquired knowledge of the Hong Kong financial market and has developed good relations with other local working partners such as banks, financial institutions and accounting firms in Hong Kong. He left CQS last year as he found the modus operandi of a hedge fund far removed from the individual and relationship type of fund management that characterised City Natural Resources.

He has clearly now found what he was looking for and praises the investment techniques fostered at Apac under chairman Chong Sok Un. They combine good conservative principles of cash flow and saleable assets with a fair bit of lateral thinking, he says. It looks as if that sums up the reasoning behind Apacs original investment in Metals X and its subsequent acquisition of the stake in Jabiru Metals. We shall clearly be hearing more from Apac in the weeks and months ahead.