Former hair regrowth king Roland ‘Husner’ Bleyer has a colourful track record. He has offered to help the Greek government by arranging a €20 billion ($29.6 billion) debt deal. He says he has held down a key role at the Azerbaijan Bank. And now he is at the heart of a controversial proposal to finance the stalled $6 billion-plus Oakajee port and rail project in Western Australia through iron ore tiddler Padbury.
But is has now emerged that Bleyer’s network of Australian companies says it was also there for billionaire Andrew Forrest in Fortescue Metals Group’s hour of need.
It was back when the iron ore miner was facing a debt crisis in late 2012. The iron price had slipped to $US87 a tonne – well down from $US140 per tonne – and Mr Forrest’s company needed to refinance $US4.5 billion ($4.8 billion) in debt. The alternative was a capital raising that would have diluted Mr Forrest’s stake.
Mr Bleyer said that he had never personally spoken to FMG “but one of the other Australian companies did speak, did talk with some people at Fortescue”.
Mr Bleyer would not say which of his companies had held discussion with Fortescue. In the case of Padbury, the proposed funding deal appears to run by a private company called Alliance Super Holdings.
Industry sources say representatives of Alliance Super Holdings, whose directors include Kenneth Grimmond and Jeffrey Perrey, have used the supposed Fortescue discussions as a selling point to do other deals. Market sources say that Mr Bleyer rarely fronts meetings with companies Alliance is interested in dealing with. He is said to leave the discussion to directors such as Mr Grimmond and Mr Perrey.
But management of funding targets met other representatives of Alliance.
But as with all things to do with Mr Bleyer, things are not straightforward.
Asked if it had every spoken to Mr Bleyer or any of his representatives, Fortescue says it is simply not the case.
“Fortescue and its chairman, Andrew Forrest, have not had any business dealings or discussions with Roland Bleyer or his network of companies,” a spokesman said.
Whether or not the talks actually took place is now a moot point. The iron ore price recovered and Fortesce is largely on top of its debt problems. Management is targeting net debt of about $US7.8 billion by the end of this year, and is set to pay off a further $US3 billion by the end of 2015.
The proposed Padbury funding agreement was announced on April 11. Padbury has been in a trading halt ever since and has promised to update the market on Wednesday. The Perth company is yet to confirm that Alliance is the identity of “mytery funder”. However, it has been widely reported that Alliance and Mr Bleyer are behind the proposed deal.
“I only took Padbury under my wing, only after Alliance had committed to them,” Mr Bleyer told The Australian Financial Review.
He said: the “only thing I asked was to remain silent investors, I didn’t want this publicity.”
Aside from Padbury and Oakajee, he said “we were also looking at 10 different potential mining companies with projects, product in the ground”.
He said Australians had low expectations of what constituted a “big” funding deal.
“Six billion is just not a good deal (overseas),” he said. “Here $100 million is like it’s the end of the world.”
Mr Bleyer also said more investment from private equity was needed in Australia, particularly to support infrastructure projects.
“I believe in this great nation we have the opportunity and privilege to live in, we need investment in private equity funds to help create nation building projects to create jobs.”
Alliance last year struck a $240 million financing deal with another iron ore junior – FairStar Resources – for its Yilgarn iron ore project. But the deal eventually fell over.
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