News

November 16, 2009

Shares In African Diamonds Soar, As Lucara Picks Up The Baton That De Beers Dropped At AK6

By Alastair Ford

Is African Diamonds in play? Des Kilalea, RBC’s well-known diamond analyst, certainly seems to think it might be. And John Teeling, the voluble executive chairman of African Diamonds itself, doesn’t seem to be ruling out such a development. Not that he’s going to go quietly. If the bids do start rolling in, he vows “to go down fighting”. One way or another, it looks like events are going to move fairly quickly from here on in on the company’s minority-owned AK6 kimberlite pipe in the Orapa district of Botswana.

In a deal brokered by African Diamonds, Toronto Venture exchange-listed Lucara, a company closely affiliated with Canadian mining magnate Lukas Lundin, has bought a 70.268 per cent stake in AK6 from De Beers for US$49 million. Lucara said it will fund the acquisition through a loan from what it termed “a company insider”, widely believed in Canada to be Lukas Lundin himself. Whether it is or it isn’t Mr Lundin in person, it’s clear that somebody somewhere is prepared to dig into deep pockets to...