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Yorkville Advisors

Based in Canada, United States, London
Active in South Africa, Spain, Slovakia, Greenland, Australia, Malawi, Peru, Ireland, Costa Rica, Kenya, Colombia,


Yorkville Advisors/YA Global Investment (not to be confused with Yorkton Securities) is a leading Canadian brokerage which places shares in, and provides loans to, a number of middle or junior ranking mining companies.

Between early 2008 and August 2009 Yorkville arranged funding for, inter alia:

Wesiswe Platinum (South Africa) [Mining Weekly 5 June 2009];
EMED Mining Public Ltd (in Spain and Slovakia) [MJ 14 August 2009];
Angus & Ross (Greenland);
Redrock Resources plc (Australia and Malawi);
South American Iron and Steel Ltd;
and Arafura Resources (Australia).
In the previous four years it had also provided financial services to Murchison Metals, Admiralty Resources, Fortescue Metals, Compass Resources and MacMin Silver.

The firm's YA Global Master SPV employs quasi-hedging techniques which combine the usage (and potential abuse) of the Special Purpose Vehicle (See Glossary) with that of a Standby Equity Distribution Agreement or SEDA (See 'Glossary). It issues these agreements from its offices in Jersey City and London.

Yorkville pioneered the use of SEDAs in 2001. They allow the fund to privately purchase a defined maximum number of shares over a specified period at a discounted price, and profit from transaction fees.

The innovation has proved attractive to a number of emerging mining companies, needing to raise equity for early-stage projects which may run a risk of not getting off (or into) the ground.

It's therefore little surprise that SEDAs seem to have been particularly favoured by companies listed on London's Alternative Investment Market (AIM) and, to a lesser extent, by Canadian juniors


http://moneytometal.org/index.php/Yorkville_Advisors