Galena is a different kettle of fish to some of the past outfits he has been with, and I think his experience of tough situations will stand him in good stead and be to G1A shareholders benefit.
For instance, Paladin was more than halfway down the tubes before he turned up there, due to the Fukushima disaster and a collapse in global Uranium prices.
Apart from that, as long as he steers clear of the Chinese he should be ok....
Former investment banking wunderkind and one-time Robert Friedland-protege Alexander Molyneux just can’t take a trick when it comes to dealing with China Inc.
The lithium play he now chairs, Argosy Minerals, has been forced to recut the terms of a $15 million equity raising after a falling-out between Argosy and China’s Qingdao Qianyun High-tech New Material Co.
Qianyun agreed in August to take a 19.9 per cent stake in Argosy at 8.5c a share and committed to offtake from Argosy’s Rincon project in northern Argentina. It quickly looked to be a particularly sweet deal for Qianyun as its shares soared as high as 31c, yet the promised funding never came.
It is understood that Qianyun, despite staring at an immediate $40m paper profit if it completed the placement, wanted to revise other terms further in its favour.
Argosy finally lost patience last week and announced it would instead raise $15m through a placement to institutional investors at a much-improved 22c a share.
A clearly disgruntled Qianyun responded by telling Argosy it was terminating the separate offtake agreement. While Argosy says Qianyun has no right to terminate, Data Room can reveal that the situation has been of such concern to investors that Argosy has had to lower the placement price from 22c to 18c.
Still Argosy will feel it is in a much better position with the revised raising than it was a month ago under the Qianyun deal, given the bright lithium price environment and the abundance of offtake deals being done in the wider industry.
There may well be a sense of deja vu to these developments for Molyneux, as he was strung along when running uranium miner Paladin Energy with promises of a company-saving investment from China National Nuclear Corp. The money never came and Paladin was ultimately forced into administration, with CNNC in the box seat to pick up Paladin’s uranium mine out of the wreckage.
And in 2012 Molyneux lost his job running coalminer SouthGobi Resources when China’s Chalco dropped a $920m offer for a majority stake in the company.
G1A Price at posting:
21.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
