monarch takeover, page-12

Kiernan quits Territory and India boards

Colin Jacoby
Wednesday, 25 June 2008

MICHAEL Kiernan has stepped down from the boards of Territory Resources and India Resources to focus on the besieged Monarch Gold, of which he is chairman, and to reduce his workload.



Michael Kiernan

Shares in Perth-based iron ore miner Territory added 12.5c to hit an intraday high of 84.5c in morning trade on today’s news, while India slipped 0.1c to 8c.

In a statement, Territory said its deputy chairman Andrew Simpson would take Kiernan’s role of chairman.

Simpson was appointed deputy chairman in May and has more than 30 years experience in international marketing and distribution of minerals and metals.

The company has also appointed founder and chief executive of global supply chain manager Noble Group, Richard Elman, to the board as a non-executive director.

Noble Group holds a 70% stake in Crawley Resources, which in turn holds a 27% interest in Territory.

Meantime, Kiernan has resigned from his position as deputy chairman of India Resources, which has not yet announced a replacement.

Kiernan told MiningNews.net this morning that he felt it was time to leave Territory, which had now become a profitable business, in order to swing his attention towards embattled Monarch Gold.

The company hit a major stumbling block at its Davyhurst operations earlier this month with the mine and plant put on care and maintenance.

“It’s not rocket science to work out that the stock market has belted Territory because of its involvement with Monarch Gold,” Kiernan told MNn.

“My vision was certainly to build a broad-based resources group as I did at Consolidated Minerals and, the same as at Consolidated Minerals, there were those that didn’t share the vision.

“There are those who are not happy with Territory being involved with gold so I just felt it was now appropriate that now Territory was up and running … it has got a strong crew directing the ship and it has got a serious profitable business so now I just wanted to focus on Monarch Gold.”

Kiernan said Monarch’s $65 million acquisition of the Mt Magnet gold project from Harmony Gold will make Monarch into a “serious company”.

“The opportunity to make the acquisition is really the opportunity of the century and I want Monarch to focus on that,” he said.

“I think that Monarch is on a rocky road at the moment … but I do know the future of Monarch … will be an underground miner at Mt Ida that will make [around] $20 million a year [while] Mt Magnet will make at least $30 million a year so Monarch is going to be making 12-15c a share going forward.

“Monarch is now basically starting a new journey and I would say that supporters who have made bucket loads of money before will support me again because they can see at the end of the day, love me or hate me, we can turn companies around.”

Shares in Monarch Gold remain in a trading halt while negotiations with Harmony continue over the purchase of the Mt Magnet project.