News

January 20, 2009

In These Troubled Times You Can’t Blame The Hambro Family For Closing Ranks To Protect The Aricom And Peter Hambro Operations

By Alastair Ford

There’s a smart round of consolidation gathering steam in the mining sector at the moment. In days gone by we might have frowned at some of the deals that are being done, given that along the way someone’s banked a fat profit, a few brokers have taken their percentages, but aside from a lot of froth in the bars of the City of London, not much else has been achieved. But all bets are off now that the world’s banks have trashed the global economy. That the Cambrian Mining team have been spinning out and reeling in companies for the best part of the past decade is no longer here nor there - the latest move in the consolidation of the Cambrian coal mining stable is simply a dash for cover before the squalls really hit. So too with the latest developments between related companies Peter Hambro Mining and Aricom. Peter Hambro spun Aricom out at a nice 15p per share back in 2003, raising £3.5 million in the process, and stating at the time that Aricom had been established “with the objective of creating an integrated mining, production and distribution group for titanium dioxide pigment and related products focused on the markets of Russia and China”.

On first dealings, Aricom was worth £14 million. Five years later and Peter Hambro now wants to buy back Aricom for roughly the same price in pence per share, or so we assume. In the flirtatious legalese that all companies are obliged to issue to each other by stock exchange regulations the talk thus far has simply been of a “significant premium” to the 10p share price that was prevailing at the time of the announcement of the potential deal on 9th January.
 
Who knows what...