South African gold mining giant Anglogold Ashanti on Thursday took its first steps into Russia, saying it would buy a 29,9% stake in London-listed Trans-Siberian Gold (TSG) in a multi-million dollar deal.
The group, born from a recent takeover by AngloGold of smaller Ghana-based rival Ashanti Goldfields, said the 17,6-million-pound ($31-million, 26-million-euro) deal would be made ”in two tranches each of some 6,13-million newly issued ordinary TSG shares”.
”Anglogold Ashanti’s investment in TSG will be used to bring two gold projects, Asacha in the Kamchatka [peninsula] and Veduga in the Krasnoyarsk region [western Siberia] into production as well as to fund TSG’s ongoing exploration,” the world’s second largest gold producer said in a statement issued in Johannesburg.
”In addition to the equity investment, Anglogold Ashanti and TSG have also agreed to form a broader partnership, in terms of which Anglogold Ashanti will have an option to exercise an earn-in right enabling it to acquire a 51% direct investment in any of TSG’s new mining or exploration projects,” it said.
TSG started trading its shares on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (Aim) in November 2003 with a market capitalisation of about 45-million pounds.
Anglogold Ashanti president Sam Jonah said the projects in Russia opened new horizons for the company.
”This is a modest move by Anglogold Ashanti and one which we are relatively sure will not be our last,” he said.
”It gives us the opportunity of establishing an association with credible partners familiar with the environment, which is the best way of mitigating the risks almost always involved in an investment in a new region,” Jonah said. – Sapa-AFP