INTRODUCTION
In the news: Base Resources & Hummingbird Resources
Despite being in the throes of the festive season, our research team of Jim Taylor and Imogen Whiteside has been very busy. The pair put out two reports yesterday, the first of which was Base Resources*† (LON:BSE) — Project Debt Facility Rescheduled, 15 December 2015. This was focused on the much-anticipated rescheduling of the Kwale Project debt facility; this was the key milestone for Base prior to the year end. The second, Hummingbird Resources*† (LON:HUM) — Maiden Reserve at Yanfolila, 15 December 2015, looked at Hummingbird’s maiden reserve at the Yanfolila Project in Mali: 666,000oz at an average grade of 3.03 g/t. The increase in both the grade and the contained gold in the maiden reserve are positive for the underlying value of the project.
Elsewhere, an excellent news report has reached me from Australia. In 1887, a 10.7kg gold nugget, said to be one of the purest in the world, was unearthed at Meroo Creek. The Maitland Bar nugget, as it was called, was bought by the New South Wales Department of Mines in an act of local largesse that would be just about unthinkable in this day and age. For years the nugget was displayed at local banks in NSW, but at some point, now lost in the mists of time, it was entrusted to the State Treasury. Then (with obviously no comment on the efficiency of state bureaucracies), the nugget was put in a box and forgotten about.
While the nugget was forgotten about, the box was not. In fact, it proved extremely useful to state officials. It was used for many years as a wicket for public servants to play cricket with in the corridors of the town hall. It’s a little vague as to why someone eventually decided to take a look inside the box after all this time, but I’d like to think it involved an office party and a ‘Jaffa’ of a delivery to flatten the wicket.
The RFC Ambrian office in London uses a similar box for its in-house cricket games. In fact, the Brits and Aussies here perform a weekly re-enactment of the 1932-33 ‘Bodyline’ Test Series in the Corporate Finance area. So, on hearing this news from Australia a veritable scrum developed to open the said box and discover what goodies it had in store. Sadly, our wicket only contained a couple of old corporate presentations and a pair of socks.