News

July 23, 2008

Mineral Securities Plans to Advance From Mini-Mining House To Mid-Tier Producer

By Charles Wyatt

Remember Mineral Securities? Yes, that’s the company that took what seemed like an age to merge with Robert Champion de Crespigny’s Scarborough Minerals and since then has been engaged in getting back together with CopperCo which it spun off back in 2006. All this corporate activity must be manna from heaven for its advisers in Australia and the UK as the company is listed on both AIM and ASX, but there has been serious industrial logic behind each deal. With the acquisition of Scarborough Mineral Securities obtained about A$30 million in cash, a new chairman and a 25 per cent interest in the Lady Loretta lead zinc mine which is about 800 yards away from the Lady Annie copper project owned by CopperCo. Money is always useful, a chairman is a necessity of life and Lady Loretta is key to the future of the enlarged group which is still seeking a new name, according to chief executive Keith Liddell.

Up until now – and the CopperCo deal is now down to the last strokes -  Mineral Securities has been rated as a form of investment trust with holdings in a number of companies. Out come the calculators to value each holding and out jump figures proving that the parts are worth more than the whole. Well bless my cotton socks, what clever little analysts they are. Perhaps they have not been out of school long enough to know that the whole of the investment trust sector is valued by way of...