This article was in today's SMH :- Buy into the float and you...

This article was in today's SMH :- Buy into the float and you end up buying part of your own company back again,well jeez that sucks for us LT holder. Probably be a reasonable buy-in too :-(

Minmetals plan to float a slice of OZ
Barry FitzGerald
June 19, 2009

CHINA'S state-owned Minmetals is considering floating off a 25 per cent interest in Minerals and Metals Group, its newly created division that last week bought most of OZ Minerals' assets in a sweetened $1.73 billion deal.

Based on MMG's acquisition cost in the OZ deal, the partial float of what would be a newly ASX-listed company could raise more than $430 million.

The money is likely to be used to fund new developments such as the stalled $500 million Dugald River zinc project in Queensland.

MMG's key asset is the Century zinc mine in north Queensland. If a partial float of MMG were to happen, it would be the fifth time around for Century.

Sold by CRA to Pasminco, which itself was floated by CRA and North Ltd, Century then passed to Zinifex on Pasminco's collapse. It later became part of OZ with the merger of Oxiana and Zinifex that created OZ.

The prospect of MMG offering local investors a stake in the company was revealed yesterday by MMG's chief executive officer and former OZ managing director, Andrew Michelmore, at a Melbourne "launch" of MMG.

The potential offer of local equity would be in keeping with a Beijing directive to state-owned enterprises to sell down 100 per cent equity positions to investors in host countries to improve transparency and deepen China's expertise and gain access to Western equity markets.

Mr Michelmore said the MMG board would meet today to determine what level of transparency MMG should adopt before any planned float.

To keep MMG and its assets in front of investors, it might continue to issue production and profit reports, even though it would have no obligation to do so.

MMG acquired all OZ's assets except for the new Prominent Hill copper-gold mine, which sits inside the Woomera rocket range in South Australia.

The Federal Government, citing national security concerns, banned Prominent Hill from being included in an earlier Minmetals takeover deal.

The president of China Minmetals Corp, Zhou Zhongshu, said it was "regretful" that Prominent Hill could not be included in the group's Australian move.

"But we also understand that this is a government decision."

Mr Zhou said he hoped MMG would come to be "recognised as a familiar and respected participant in the Australian and international mining and exploration community". He met federal ministers and the Opposition on Wednesday. Wang Lixin, the president of China Minmetals Non-ferrous Metals (MMG's immediate parent), said the politicians had shown a "very supportive attitude".

His comments came as another state-owned group, Chinalco, continued to rage about Rio Tinto pulling out of its $US19.2 billion ($24.2 billion) refinancing deal.

Canberra never got to rule on the Chinalco investment but commentary from China has been that Canberra was not keen for the deal to proceed.