News

May 13, 2008

Perseus Mining May Have Another Star In The Stable In Cote D’Ivoire

By Charles Wyatt

It is no easy task to keep one’s share price on the move when all the news is about rising gold resources and production is not expected until 2010 at the earliest. Mark Calderwood, managing director of Australian-listed Perseus Mining is finding this out. He’s has recently completed a tour of Europe, where 32 per cent of the company’s shares are held, to keep investors up to speed. Now he is going to list in Canada, presumably following the example of Adamus Resources, on which we commented recently. The common theme running between the two companies is that they both operate in Ghana, and as Ghana is in West Africa it does not come top of an Aussie investor’s wish list. What they overlook is that Ghana is one of Africa’s top gold producers and has a very stable, mining-friendly economy.

To delve further into history, Ghana ceased to be a British colony in 1957, has an English code of law, an economic growth rate approaching six per cent and is only six hours flight from London. Few North American investors, it should never be forgotten, have ever had a geography lesson, but there is a fair number of Canadian-listed mining companies operating successfully  in West Africa and most of them are valued considerably more aggressively than Perseus in terms the ratio between...