Wake up guys!! Game On..The mighty tiger is beginning to...

Wake up guys!! Game On..
The mighty tiger is beginning to growl!!
(2 articles below)
nil.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/latest/tigers-realm-coal-grabs-russian-project-by-the-tail-with-625m-raising/story-e6frg90f-1226861829425

Tigers Realm Coal grabs Russian project by the tail with $62.5m raising

BARRY FITZGERALD -
THE AUSTRALIAN MARCH 22, 2014 2:30AM

The odds are stacked against junior resources companies being able to raise equity in support of new mining projects anywhere in the world.

The Crimean crisis would seem to have made things doubly difficult when it comes to new resources investment in Russia, be it by juniors or the big miners from the West.

But it can be done for the right project, something that Tigers Realm Coal (TIG) has managed to pull off for its Amaam coking coal development in the far east Russian province of Chukotka.

TIG has just received the nod from shareholders to pull in $62.5 million from an equity funding package supported by the $US10 billion ($11bn) state development fund established under the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian Direct Development Fund and a Britain/US-backed Russian specialist private equity fund, Baring Vostok. They are joined by Bruce Gray, the founder and former chairman of cancer therapies group Sirtex Medical.

Originally disgruntled with the dilution that came with the Amaam equity raising, Dr Gray -- who sold his remaining shares in Sirtex last year for $87m -- is now on board with the plan.

The privately held Tigers Realm Minerals (TRM), which spun out TIG and which was created by the former Oxiana grouping of Owen Hegarty, Tony Manini, David Forsyth and Craig Parry, is also on board the Russian push.

At the conclusion of the fund-raising, TIG will be owned 24.3 per cent by Baring Vostok, 13.3 per cent by TRM, 11 per cent by Russian Direct Development Fund and 13 per cent by Dr Gray, who has secured an option over some of TRM's stock that enables him to return to a 19 per cent position in TIG's expanded capital base.

The remote but resources-rich Chukotka province is the size of NSW but has a population of only 50,000 people and comes with the added challenge of a brown bear population that requires TIG's exploration field crews to be accompanied by local hunters to ensure they all make it back to camp.

Thanks to the equity raising, TIG remains on schedule to begin production next year from its "starter" Amaam North deposit, with first shipments expected in 2016.

Amaam North was originally discovered by BHP Billiton when it, too, thought the region's Bering coking coal field could become one of the world's major new sources of coking coal. BHP later retreated to focus on its best-in-class Bowen Basin operations in Queensland, opening up the opportunity to TIG to partner on an 80 per cent basis at Amaam, with the Canadian interests holding the remaining 20 per cent.

Leading the TIG push into Russian coal is its chief executive Craig Parry, a 40-year-old considered one of the industry's future leaders.

A 1999 NSW university geology graduate who became interested in the mining scene in the 1990s after knocking around in Kalgoorlie, Mr Parry spent much of his early career in a business development role around the world with Rio Tinto, looking for the next big thing.

Later stints with Oxiana when it was considering a move into bulk commodities, and his foundation role at TRM saw him become chief executive of TIG a little more than a year ago with the task of making the Amaam project a 10 million-tonne-a-year coking exporter. Mr Parry has not met Mr Putin. But he is in no doubt about the President's commitment to development in the far east as Russia's gateway to the booming resources demand in Asia.

"They are very keen to strengthen ties and capitalise on the opportunity to work more closely with Asia, Mr Parry told The Weekend Australian.

The Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East has been established and Moscow's interest in sponsoring development in the region -- Mr Parry likes to refer to it as Pacific Russia -- is reflected in the support of Russian Direct Development Fund with its initial $16.3m investment in TIG. Fortunately for TIG, the showdown in Crimea is more than 7500km away.

Mr Parry said the only potential impact he could see from the complex geopolitical situation in Crimea is for the West to get tough with sanctions.

"But I think Russia's role as a major energy supplier to Europe means it is unlikely that any investment trade sanctions will come to pass," he said. "You would hope that cool heads prevail.

"The message we are getting from our investors remains that Russia is a good place to invest.

"The Crimean situation is not ideal, but we are not too concerned."

In reality, the current weakness in coking coal prices poses the biggest threat to TIG's ambition to become a major exporter of the steelmaking raw material to customers in northern China and elsewhere.

"The price could be better," Mr Parry said. "BHP (the world's biggest exporter) has got its act together and is getting its Bowen Basin supply chain going at full pace again, which has had an impact on short-term prices."

Current expectations are that coking coal will trade at about $US130 a tonne in the current quarter, down from last (calendar) year's average of $US146 a tonne and about $US198 a tonne in 2012.

"The price is not great news but it is at a level at which you will start to see a lot of the producers -- particularly in North America -- start to close operations," Mr Parry said.

"So we can see an improved pricing situation in 12 to 24 months.

"And in the longer term, the fundamentals speak for themselves.

"Coking coal is the most scarce of the steelmaking materials -- China consumed an additional 60 million tonnes last year -- and the world is going to need more of it."


And This From the AGE today..


http://www.theage.com.au/business/russians-take-a-large-slice-of-tigers-realm-coal-20140323-35bkq.html

Russians take a large slice of Tigers Realm Coal
March 24, 2014

Peter Ker
Resources reporter

Some big names in Australian business came together in Melbourne on Friday to collectively smoke the peace pipe.
After a spectacular dust-up in December, the likes of former Sirtex boss Bruce Gray, mining entrepreneur Owen Hegarty and representatives of transport mogul Paul Little joined the other shareholders of Tigers Realm Coal to agree that once again all was well with their Russian coal play.
The $83 million junior hit a rough patch over Christmas when the board sought to bring two of Russia's biggest investment funds onto the register and told shareholders that one of them would become the company's biggest shareholder without being subject to shareholder approval.
That and other suggestions angered Mr Gray - then the company's second biggest shareholder - and prompted him to cry foul to the Takeovers Panel, where he found a sympathetic audience.
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But after months of negotiation and compromise, the placements were finally put to a binding vote of shareholders on Friday, with the vast majority (including Mr Gray) voting to welcome the two Russians funds into the company.
The agreement will radically change the top ranks of the company's share register.
Russia's biggest private equity firm, Baring Vostok, has paid $36.2 million to take a dominant 24 per cent stake in the company.
The same nation's $US10 billion direct investment fund, created by the Russian government in a bid to encourage foreign companies, has paid $16.3 million to become Tigers' fourth biggest shareholder with 11 per cent.
Hegarty's Tigers Realm Minerals will be second biggest with 13.3 per cent, Mr Gray's will be third with 13 per cent and Mr Little's investment vehicle, Namarong will be the fifth biggest with 4.2 per cent.
Tigers' chief executive, Craig Parry, said the combination of government and private Russian money should convince investors that sovereign risk was not a major problem for Tigers, which is developing a coking coal project on Russia's isolated east coast.
''We don't think political risk is a major thing there, but the perception of that risk is pretty strong in Western markets, and having them there together knocks out that risk to a large degree,'' he said, adding that the trouble in the Ukraine was half a world away from Tigers' Amaam North project.