Thanks
@Thesimmos - you really did your home work on the 2 companies' overlap.
Been digging around in the same dirt as you lately, trying to understand a little more about what these 2 companies have been up to together.
You asked a question about their prior joint investments in the GXY thread but since I think its sorta more relevant here I'll put up the info here.
GMM sold off all Mongolian assets and allowed all leases to lapse by 2013.
Shoemaker was put on hold to find a JV because by then GMM were pinning all hopes on a gold mine at Chesterfield and GXY was on the skids after GFC, dollar parity and Mt Cattlin mine closure.
btw: December 2013 - GMM 2c GXY 4c
http://www.generalmining.com/pdf/asx_releases/14_3_2014/GMM164 2014-03-14 HalfYear Report 2013-12.pdf
They still hold those assets as far as I know. GMM could finish drilling Chesterfield and run a gold mine there if it shaped up. Shoemaker was indicative of uranium too so that may still see some revisiting.
Top Shareholders in GMM
Most recent I can find a list is the Oct 2015 financial report
http://www.generalmining.com/pdf/asx_releases/30_10_2015/GMM228 2015-10-30 Annual Report 2015.pdf
page 46.
Top shareholder is Investmet which was started up by Fotios as a mining investment group after he left GXY in 2008.
It was meant to be a high risk mining investment group and had a huge win on Northern Star.
As late as 2012 GMM appears last on his investment list as an “exploring for coal and base metals in Mongolia”.
(mmm.. good luck with that..)
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/14436430/fotios-spreads-his-wings/
After some disagreements with other board members Investmet is now “almost entirely owned by Mr Fotios and interests associated with his family"
https://www.businessnews.com.au/article/Wyllie-Group-cuts-ties-with-Investmet
btw: the listed number of shares for Investmet is different in the 2 different places its mentioned. I think the top number seems more right as that is was they have held historically (about 20m)
GXY is listed as the fifth largest holder, still with 5m shares.
I think I see where you are going with all this - particularly with the share ownership of GMM so top heavy with Fotios and that shareholder votes may well be dominated by "the family”.
Galaxy and GMM basically couldn't be closer related.
Not only was Michael Fotios Galaxy director 2006-2008 - he was there from the start.
Before it was called Galaxy it was a gold mining company called Australasian Gold Mines in Norseman. It went into receivership, sold off its assets and re-emerged as Galaxy.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/news/14436430/fotios-spreads-his-wings/
I don’t know why he left Galaxy in 2008 - but it looks like it was just to make a stack more money by forming Investmet.
Its likely that he was in the right place at the right time, with the right contacts and with a stack of money (thanks to the divestment that occurred when Investmet members split up the band) to re-position GMM with a new gig? A dream gig too - straight from marginal gold exploration to a top tier lithium company.
Yep - it was maybe too good to be true - but Galaxy were down to their last $50k and Fotios knew that. That was his method at the time - rescue starving mining companies and take a big stake in their resurrection.
The GXY investments in earlier GMM projects were perhaps a measure of how much faith they had in Fotios for pick winning investments. When we became director of Northern Star in late 2009 they had a 2c share price (now $3.50). When GXY co-invested in the Shoemaker project in 2011 the NST sp was already closing in on 50c. GXY was crashing hard mid June 2011 and a year away from closing Mt Cattlin. Perhaps they were desperate for a way out of debtsville at Mt Cattlin/jiangu and willing to take a bet on him for some profit or change horses out of lithium.
Anyway - its an interesting bit of WA mining history and all these past trials and disaster have put us right here today with shares in a great company and a fast rising sp.
"If you have a good management and the right projects you can survive most of the traumas you are going to experience in a mining company," Fotios says. "And if you are good enough, you will always find another project to make money for your shareholders."
Cheers to you Mike
