The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Monday was an upbeat 107-79-124 as the TSX Venture Exchange jumped 10 points to 864. Roger Shook and Samuel Chen's Vanadiumcorp Resource Inc. (VRB) rose one-half cent to four cents on 64,000 shares.
News last week from Vanadiumcorp likely brought a smile to the face of former chief executive officer, Pat O'Brien, with word that the company had "removed" Adriaan Bakker as its president and CEO, effective immediately. His replacement on an interim basis is Paul McGuigan, but according to Vanadiumcorp, its board will form a committee to "search for a CEO with proven experience in the province of Quebec."
Nine years ago, a group of dissidents led by Mr. Bakker and Stephen Pearce, upset with the slow pace at the Lac Dore vanadium project near Chibougamau, launched a successful bid to end Mr. O'Brien's 21-year stay in the corner office. They first forced Mr. O'Brien out, then waged a war of attrition against his remaining crew, questioning whether "years of experience flying helicopters" was a suitable qualification for one incumbent, Don Venturi, and pointing out that another, Christian Derosier, had been required to "take a course" before he joined the board.
Late in 2013, the dissidents put Mr. Bakker in charge and added him to the board -- a role he keeps for now -- along with Mr. Pearce. In anointing Mr. Bakker as its new head, the company cheered his "10 years experience in the mineral exploration sector," noting he was "directly involved in corporate finance, management, project acquisition and development, business development, as well as corporate communications." As it turned out, those 10 years were spent mainly as an investor relations man for Mr. O'Brien at Vanadiumcorp.
While Mr. Bakker and his new directors were not required to take a course before taking charge, the regulators repeatedly schooled him and the company during his nine-year tenure. After months of hype, Vanadiumcorp rolled out a promised technical report for the project in mid-2014, but within days the company had to issue a retraction for the voluminous document, clarifying that Lac Dore did not have a current resource.
Mr. Bakker and his crew did produce a resource estimate in 2015, but they quickly had to retract several bits of information relating to mining rates, mine life and other dollops of enthusiasm that could be construed as deeming the project feasible. Other claims and retractions followed, and for a time it appeared the regulators had Vanadiumcorp on speed dial.
The pattern continued into late 2017, when Vanadiumcorp finally released a preliminary economic assessment. The regulators demanded amendments to make it compliant, but the company missed the mid-2018 deadline for a refiled dream sheet. When the regulators acted later that year, Vanadiumcorp was not only left without a compliant study; they also forced it to retract its three-year-old resource estimate. As a result, Vanadiumcorp began 2019 much like it began 2013 -- with neither a resource estimate nor a preliminary economic assessment for Lac Dore.
By then, Mr. Bakker and his crew were shifting their pitch toward high-tech uses of vanadium, a promotion that got the company's perennial four-cent stock into the mid-teens on occasion. Unfortunately, investors were often unable to sell their shares as in what became a rite of spring, Vanadiumcorp failed to produce its audited financials on time, getting its stock halted in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Now, with Vanadiumcorp again near the four sad cents at which it languished through the mid-2010s, and with vanadium prices flying high, the company's board has decided a new CEO is needed to advance Lac Dore.
At least Mr. McGuigan and his eventual successor have a new resource estimate to cheer. In the fall of 2020, after a regulator-required drill program, Mr. Bakker listed Lac Dore as hosting about 52.8 million tonnes of magnetite concentrate averaging 1.3 per cent vanadium oxide, 62 per cent iron and 8.7 per cent titanium oxide. Another 22.6 million tonnes of magnetite concentrate are inferred at comparable grades.
What the new man has planned is not clear, but Vanadiumcorp had proposed a 2022 budget of $3.57-million that included $2-million for Lac Dore, mainly drilling, assaying and environmental studies, as well as $855,000 in work at Iron T, a vanadium-iron project near Matagami, and $700,000 for metallurgical work at both projects.
Mr. Pearce, a lawyer by trade who remains chief financial officer, notes that he was "instrumental in his role in transitioning the company by proxy in 2013" -- did we mention he was a lawyer? -- but there is no word yet about how he feels about the company transitioning Mr. Bakker out of his job. It is clear, however, that Mr. Bakker no longer had enough friends among his five fellow directors to remain in charge.