talisman

Talisman Mining, the Australian listed explorer, “has been looking at a stake sale” and has had approaches, CEO Steve Elliot said. The approaches have come from Chinese steel makers, Elliot said. Talisman is “producing a lot of stuff the Chinese want,” he added. When asked if the Chinese companies concerned were similar to the private Chinese steel maker Jinagsu Shagang, Elliot said that there were. He went on to say that Talisman Mining has not defined a stake size for sale and that if a bidder wanted a full take over, "we would look at it, at the right price." Elliot added that Talisman is vastly under-priced. The majority share holders in Talisman are Elliot, with a 9% stake, and Kerry Harmanis with a 7.1% stake through the private Australian holding company Tyche Holdings P/L. When asked if Talisman would use third party advisors, Elliot said that “we would use external advisors as we need that expertise that the corporate experts provide.” He went on to say that he has already had very recent discussions with advisors, but declined to name the firms.

Predominantly an iron ore explorer, despite starting as a copper gold and explorer, Talisman’s Wonumunna project is its main focus. Currently conducting a scoping study, Wonumunna has an estimated resource of 44m tonnes with an upcoming announcement in November expected to increase the size. With “the scoping study completed by Christmas 2008, we will be able to decide the direction of the company,” Elliot said. Despite the project being around 300km from the coast, it is only 6km from Rio Tinto’s rail line. Talisman is looking at all options for the project as it “is not big enough to be a standalone operation,” Elliot said. It could consider using Rio Tinto’s rail line, carrying out a joint venture with another junior miner or selling the project outright, he said. Talisman has around ten employees, with AUD 6.5m (USD 5.4m) in the bank; it spends AUD 0.25m (USD 0.21m) per month on exploration. It has a market cap of AUD 21.76m (USD 17.85m).