Friedland gets Ivanplats IPO away for $307m

[miningmx.com] – MINING entrepeneur Robert Friedland has once again
demonstrated his peerless powers of persuasion and marketing, floating Ivanplats on
the Toronto Stock Exchange – a company with assets in two of Africa’s riskiest
districts: the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Africa.

Ivanplats, of which Friedland is president, raised $307m in cash. All in all, some
$504m in equity was issued in connection with the venture. Friedland said the listing
represented a new chapter in the 18-year-old history of Ivanplats.

“Ivanplats has assembled an experienced and accomplished board of directors and
senior management team whose collective vision is to build an international,
commodity-diversified mining company,’ said Friedland in a press statement.

The overall aggregate equity also consists of two tranches of pre-IPO bonds issued in
2011 and 2012. Nonetheless, the equity raising is an extraordinary feat considering
the decline in confidence in commodity markets over the past 12 months, and the
streaky politics in both the DRC and South Africa, the latter the subject of credit
agency downgrades this month.

Ivanplats assets consist of the “world-scale’ Kamoa copper deposit in the DRC and the
Platreef deposit, ostensibly a platinum group metal project but consisting of important
nickel by-product that analysts have said would give the project its wings.

An indicative value of $3.5bn has been attached to Platreef on the basis that Japanese
group ITOCHU invested $280m for a portion of the project.

It’s thought Friedland will seek to sell a stake in the Kamoa project, also to an Asian
investor.

Chinese investors have been keen to snap up African assets, the latest being Sinchuan
Hanlong, which raised just over $1bn for the takeover of iron ore developer Sundance
Resources. Discovery Metals, which is digging for copper in Botswana, is also this
week the subject of a hostile $850m bid from Yu Yong, the Chinese billionaire investor
who heads CF Investments.

The flotation is not without considerable prevarication in the past regarding Ivanplats.
Friedland initially promised to go public on his plans for the company as early as
2006; he demurred on the project a second time at the beginning of this year after
promising to go public at the Investing in Africa Indaba conference.

The timing of the flotation is thought to be informed by the fact Friedland lost a legal
fight with Rio Tinto regarding the takeover of the $16bn Ivanhoe Mines, a company
that owns the Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold project in Mongolia.

Friedland is arguably one of the world’s most famous mining entrepreneurs and is best
known for the discovery of the Voisey’s Bay nickel deposit in Canada, which he sold
for $3.1bn to Inco in the late Nineties.