RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Strategic Investment AnnouncedM,
Yup, saw that passage while checking out Columbus Gold stirring up the Pandora's box with a proposed slate of director. Columbus currently has 2% of ER hence it has some say with its voting power. ER Management, insiders have 4.4% institutionals have 42%, and the rest 53% for retails.
It looks like ICG is considered as a white knight and would have support from the current board which seems to go along with the slate of new directors including de Jong, Salamis, and Timo Simoneau as interim CEO (looks like Robinson and his wife are on the way out? Robinson just bought 100k shares to beef up his ER holdings, but this is too small to help).
Anyhow, an investment of $6M would get ICG 9.9% of ER which is not bad (no premium).
Where does ICG get the $$$?
- $6M from the wts exercise could come in handy;
- Bigger $$$ for development of Lamaque, etc...: Don't worry about that stuff, since it would appear that a deep-pocket is lurking in the shadow. But, the grafitis are all over the walls with names of former exes of a major gold company. Some key names:
- Jacques Simonneau: ICG Exploration Manager;
- Claude Lemasson: Proposed as Interim President and Board Member of ER;
- Tim Jauristo: Proposed Board Member of ER
If ELD is not snappy, it may just lose the chance for a JV at Lamaque (My suggestion to ELD: Just jettison Greek mine, try to sell this mine to someone and get some of the $0.5B back. Since ELD has written off a huge sum already, it would be a good business decision not to spend another $1B to bring this mine to production... with uncertainties on the labour front and government down the road. Buy Canadian,e.g. ICG, instead. The other company, ELD rival, would probably go for the whole thing, including the Mill and tailings facilities. So ELD may want to keep this option open as well.
While we are at this, let's throw in PRB merger Adventure Gold as another piece of the puzzle. Note that the same major gold company also agreed to join in with some additional investment in PRB to keep its holding to 15% after the merger. The Val d'Or East project is just a short (freight) train ride to ICG Mill. What a mess during the last 2 days.
GH