Helping Northam make acquisitions

ZAMBEZI Platinumplans to help Northam Platinummake acquisitions and expand operations after paying R4.6 billion as part of a transaction for a 31.4 percent stake in the local mining company. Zambezi, owned by black investors, is listing preference shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange today that it sold at R41 each. Legislation requires that non-white South Africans own at least 26 percent of mines in the country, a policy aimed at redressing economic disparities created during apartheid. “We are not just passengers in the vehicle, we are very much active participants,” Lazarus Zim, the chief executive of Zambezi and Northam’s chairman, said on Friday. “We are in a position to, hopefully, grow the company significantly.” Zim is the former chief executive of London-based Anglo American’s South African unit, ex-chairman of Kumba Iron Ore and Telkom, and a past president of South Africa’s Chamber of Mines. His Afripalm Resources helped to facilitate Northam’s acquisition of the Booysendal property in 2007, where the company has since built a new mine, which is operational. Preference share investors will be paid an annual dividend at South Africa’s prime rate, plus 3.5 percentage points. Almost 160 million securities will be issued following an offer to existing Northam investors that closed on Friday, according to a notice on Northam’s website. Northam, which owns the world’s deepest platinum mine, would use the proceeds of the Zambezi deal to pursue deals and expand mines, it said in October. It announced a deal in February to buy the Everest mine, which is contiguous to Booysendal, for R450m from Aquarius Platinum. – Bloomberg