los calatos tenements

Slide 6 of the MNC presentation at the Mines and Money Conference shows a large blue/lilac coloured square shaped tenement. This tenement, under control of Minera Peñoles should be labelled "Omate Cruz" rather than "Luciana 1".

The reason I am drawing attention to this trivial fact is that there is an interesting little story behind this particular tenement which is worth sharing:

This tenement comprising 900 hectares of land was held by Rio Tinto from December 2006 under the name of Luciana 1. Rio Tinto never drilled it and lost it in late 2010 after it missed paying the rates for two years (2009 & 2010). The area was opened up for applications in February 2011 and 8 simultaneous applications were lodged, the applicants included Cerro Norte (subsidiary of Metminco), Minera Pampa de Cobre (subsidiary of Milpo - peruvian Cu, Zn, Pb & Ag miner), Teck Peru, Buenaventura (largest peruvian gold miner), Minera Peñoles (large mexican, Au, Ag, Zn, Pb miner) and 3 individual persons. Cerro Norte was aiming to name the tenement "Luz del Sur", Teck had it as "Paleo 05" and Minera Peñoles as "Omate Cruz".

The government decided that all applications were valid and that it would grant the tenement to the highest bidder in a sealed bid auction. The auction was conducted on July 21, 2011 and the bids were:

Minera Pampa de Cobre: S/. 170
Individual 1: S/. 300
Individual 2: S/. 400
Individual 3: S/. 600
Buenaventura: S/. 25,200
Teck Peru: S/. 69,000
Cerro Norte: S/. 684,777.50 ( ~ AU$230,000 at the exchange rate of the day)
Minera Peñoles: S/. 1,100,000 (~ AU$370,000 at the exchange rate of the day)

Consequently the tenement was allocated to Minera Peñoles and the tenement is named "Omate Cruz"

There is another story that stems from this one, but will tell it another day to avoid distracting from this one.

You guys can make your own conclusions and interpretations of this story, the takeaway for me is the size of the bids and the names of the bidders (and that of other companies not bidding).

Alejandro
--------------
DYOR, this is not investment advice
STO, BDR, TRY, MNC, ELT