WORTH A SECOND CHANCEGiving people a second chance is not just...

WORTH A SECOND CHANCE

Giving people a second chance is not just the prerogative of David Cameron, it seems. Occasionally even the normally harsh City can be a forgiving place too, which is a good thing as far as African Minerals is concerned, a company that specialises in extracting iron ore from Sierra Leone.

African Minerals is chaired by the entrepreneur Frank Timis, who was chairman of Regal Petroleum when it was fined 600,000 pounds by London's junior stock market AIM for failing on 11 separate occasions to "take reasonable care to ensure its announcements were not misleading, false or deceptive and didn't omit material information"

As well as being the executive chairman of African Minerals, Timis is the second largest shareholder with a 12 per cent stake, but that hasn't stopped the likes of BlackRock, M&G and Capital from backing the group. Indeed his presence is what pulls most of those investors there. Also, only last week the blue-chip Deutsche Bank became the group's nominated adviser. Deutsche, who declined to comment, was impressed by recent additions to the group's board.

Yesterday shares in the group spiked by around seven per cent to hit an all-time high of 663p after it announced a deal in which the Chinese Shandong Iron & Steel Group will invest $1.5bn in an iron ore project. AIM-listed African Minerals is now worth around 2.2bn pounds, not far short of the market capitalisation of a FTSE-100 company.

Analysts from the likes of Deutsche and Bank of America Merrill Lynch weighed in with buy notes yesterday.

Timis has a record for making huge sums of money for shareholders in some deals, while other ventures such as Regal Petroleum have ended less successfully for him and those who have backed him. But there is always an exciting ride along the way.

http://www.cityam.com/news-and-analysis/david-hellier/relief-over-debt-deal-short-lived