Mining’s old guard needs strong medicine
A new report details subpar investor returns in the mining industry over the last decade, particularly big cap diversified companies which have not adapted to new realities.
Rusoro Mining Ltd (CVE:RML) stock more than doubled on Tuesday after the junior miner announced an international tribunal found in its favour in suit against the Venezuelan government over the South American nation’s seizure of its gold projects.
By the close the Vancouver-based company changed hands at $0.345 per share on the TSX Venture Exchange, up 122% affording the company a market worth just over $182 million. Nearly 12 million shares were traded, many multiples of usual volumes for the counter.
In a statement Rusoro said the arbitration tribunal operating under World Bank rules awarded damages of US$967.77 million plus interest which the company estimates would swell the total to more than $1.2 billion (CAD 1.55 billion):
Rusoro filed its request for arbitration before ICSID (World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes) on July 17, 2012 under the Canada-Venezuela Bilateral Investment Treaty (“BIT”). In its Award, the Tribunal upheld Rusoro’s claims that Venezuela breached its obligations under the BIT by unlawfully expropriating Rusoro’s investments without paying compensation and by imposing certain restrictions on the export of gold.
Rusoro operated the Choco mine and owned a 50% interest in the Isidora gold mine that produced some 110,000 ounces annually at the time it was seized. The state held the rest. Rusoro also owned 10 exploration projects in Venezuela and boasts gold reserves of 5,584,000 oz, M&I gold resources of 10,730,000 oz and inferred resources of 6,805,000 oz.
In August 2011 late President Hugo Chavez embarked on a program to nationalize the gold industry, from mining through to processing, and move the country’s bullion reserves held in Europe to Venezuela’s central bank. Venezuela is outside the top 20 gold producing countries and is the process of selling the gold reserves it repatriated in 2012.
7 Comments
lightupajointwithjustin
now comes the real hard part!…………..trying to collect!
goldfinger
They could pay out in toilet paper and food. Hang on. Maybe not.
Maybe if Rusoro likes assault rifles and hot Venezualan women have a few of those spare. The winners in this deal are Goldfields who sold that thing for a song 12 months before it was nationalised.
allan
I suspect there is more to this story than a simple court order and expectations this penny stock will soar. Discarded soda bottles look like a safer bet now and well into the future, but then there is nothing wrong with a little technicolor dreaming.
Matt
Venezuela has no money. Chavez is just another in a long, long list of leaders that think because they know nothing about anything they can become a successful miner. A Socialist brick is still a brick…..just a lazier one. lol
Matt
The only advantage to this settlement, which is totally uncollectable is that the incoming Ven Govt, may be forced to settle with Rusoro by granting their properties back to them.
AZ Guy
Venezuela is Bernie Sanders dreamland
Carlos
now the poor must pay to those who exploit them, and they have the arrogance to call it justice…
I only wish for Maduro to remain in power and for the dirty canadian rusomoro to die of diarrhea.
Death to all capitalists!