mystery buyer, page-10

There it is:
Cape Lambert Iron Ore is being stalked by a mystery investor, three weeks out from a crucial meeting at which shareholders will be asked to ratify the $400 million sale of the miner’s main asset.
It remained unclear last night whether the investor was linked to Delong Holdings, a Singaporean metals group controlled by Russian steel giant Evraz.
Delong already has a 4.4 per cent stake in Cape Lambert and sufficient options to take its holdings to nearly 13 per cent. Although Delong is yet to announce the options exercise, it declared last month it intended to convert as soon as possible.
Big trading volumes in Cape Lambert over past week are thought to have netted the mystery investor a stake of almost 6 per cent.
The stake building helped push Cape Lambert’s shares as high as $82c on Monday before slumping 7.5c to 70.5c yesterday as buying dried up.
If the stalker is indeed Delong or an affiliated party, the exercised options and newly acquired stake would take the total holding in Cape Lambert to close to the 19.9 per cent takeover threshold.
Also heightening speculation of a possible bid was a suggestion in the marketplace that an unidentified party had applied for Foreign Investment Review Board approval regarding an investment in Cape Lambert. Overseas investors need FIRB approval to take equity stakes of more than 14.9 percent I Australian companies.
A substantial shareholder notice is likely to be logged as early as today.
But the emergence of the shareholder so close to the July 28 meeting has prompted speculation Cape Lambert‘s deal to sell its namesake magnetite project to China Metallurgical Group Corp (MCC) for $400 million may have hit last-minute hitch.
Cape Lambert’s cash backing following the MCC deal will be more than 90c a share. Meaning any bid would need to be priced at at least $1.
Peter Klinger The West Australian