News

February 25, 2008

Eleckra Mines Starts 2008 With New Management And A New Sense Of Purpose

By Charles Wyatt

Judging by the recent performance of Eleckra Mines' share price, the chairmanship of the Australian-listed company is a position few would envy. Ian Murray, however, sees it differently. There’s a very positive tone in his voice as he speaks over the phone from Perth, to where he has moved. His last job was in South Africa where he spent nine years as finance director and chief executive of DRDGold. That job inevitably meant constant travel, as Emperor Mines was a subsidiary of DRD at the time and it had a 20 per cent stake in the big Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea. Emperor also owned the Vatakoula mine in Fiji. Since Ian Murray left, the stake in Porgera has been sold to Barrick for US$250 million and Vatakoula has gone to Westech, and from thence to Colin Orr-Ewing’s little Aim-traded River Diamonds. Small world, isn’t it?

So one way or another Ian, who originally qualified as an accountant, has plenty of experience of the mining industry and could even claim that he got these companies into shape so that DRD could cash in its chips. But having cleared its debt and consolidated its assets in South Africa, DRD now has to face the power problems.

Ian won’t have any of these problems as long as his generators work well enough out in the Australian bush, but he has hardly got his feet under the table at...