IGO lithium price afire now nickel price takes off, page-14

https://thewest.com.au/business/lit...akes-mark-creasy-an-igo-billionaire-c-5305925

Battery minerals runs makes Mark Creasy an IGO billionaire

Sean SmithThe West Australian
Fri, 14 January 2022 12:50PMComments
Sean Smith


Mark Creasy, left, with Galileo Mining managing director Brad Underwood in 2018. Credit: Supplied/Galileo Mining

The new rush into battery minerals has made an IGO billionaire out of the company’s biggest shareholder, veteran prospector Mark Creasy.

Mr Creasy’s holding in IGO cracked the $1 billion mark on Friday as the stock extend its gain over the past three months to 46 per cent, hitting a third consecutive record high of $12.78.

The rise revalued the company, which last month struck an agreed $1.1b cash takeover of nickel miner Western Areas, at $9.6 billion.

Mr Creasy holds 80.5 million IGO shares, or 10.6 per cent of the company, worth $1.03b at its last price of $12.72, up 2 per cent.

The run has likely sent Mr Creasy’s total personal wealth hurtling closer to $1.5b. His equity holdings alone, largely held through Yandal Investments, are valued at $1.1b, according to Bloomberg data.

The Yandal portfolio holds nearly 20 juniors, including 45 per cent of CZR Resources, nearly 17 per cent of Azure Minerals and 13.8 per cent of Legend Mining.

Mr Creasy, who has said he will die with his “boots on”, graduated from the Royal School of Mines in London before moving to Australia in 1964. He lobbed in WA in the late 1960s after working as a mining engineer in Broken Hill.
Mr Creasy’s first big prospecting success came in the 1970s when he found a 46-ounce gold nugget near Mt Magnet.
But it took him another two decades to bed down the deal that would cement his reputation as the country’s best-known prospector — the $173 million cash and share sale of stakes in the Bronzewing, Jundee and Plover Bore gold leases to Joseph Gutnick’s Great Central Mines.

He parlayed the cash into other investments but continued prospecting. Ground he pegged in the Fraser Range eventually led to the discovery of Sirius Resources’ Nova nickel-copper deposit.

Mr Creasy converted his 35 per cent holding in Sirius into IGO via the latter’s takeover of the company in 2015, having sold his 30 per cent direct stake in the project to Sirius for more than $200 million.

IGO and other miners are bulking up on metals such as nickel and lithium, which are seen as crucial to the clean energy transition.

The Perth-based company last year also grabbed a stake in the world’s biggest hardrock lithium mine at Greenbushes, south of Perth, through a new joint venture with Tianqi Lithium that also delivered a share of the latter’s lithium hydroxide plant at Kwinana.