News

July 01, 2009

With £26 Million To Invest, New Fund Altus Resource Capital Is Well Placed To Benefit From Any Further Recovery In Equity Markets

By Alastair Ford

If ever there was an indication of the lack of any real correlation between the world of the smaller mining company and the broader UK economy - notwithstanding that many miners are listed in London - it came on Tuesday 30th June, a day on which official government data showed that the UK’s recession has been going on for longer than was previously thought, and that the slump in GDP in the most recent quarter was the steepest it’s been for 51 years. It was also the day on which Steven Poulton of privately-owned Altus Strategies announced the launch of Altus’s new investment fund, Altus Resource Capital, following the successful raising of £26 million in new money and the listing of the fund’s shares on the London stock exchange.

That new war-chest may be small beer compared to the trillions of dollars of debt that Gordon Brown has saddled us with, but investors should take note – while the construction and service sectors are in the doldrums, consumer spending grinds to a halt, and banks are still reluctant to lend, the mining sector is showing signs of recovering its poise. The equities markets have bounced back, to some degree at least, and metals prices appear to have bottomed out. What’s more, allocating £26...