Diamond explorer and pittado miner, Diamond Rose NL has set its sights on two West Australian diamond explorers, Stiker Resources NL and Dioro Exploration NL. If successful, the takeover will represent a major expansion of Diamond Rose’s position in the
Joe Gutnick’s sister Pnina Feldman led Diamond Rose to a stunning debut when her small gemstone hopeful finished its opening day valued at $159 million.
The shares opened at $1.51 and, within an hour, the hype surrounding the float had driven them to a staggering high of $1.75.
This represented a nine-fold increase on their 20c issue price.
Shares in the fledgling miner ended the day at $1.29, valuing Ms Feldman’s personal 57.5 per cent stake in the miner at a staggering $91.59 million.
The company, which has no proven tenements, is capitalized at $156.1 million, compared with its $10 million initial public offering. Outside the Sydney exchange, Ms Feldman, flanked by four daughters, six rabbis and grand-daughter Rose said she was ecstatic with the debut, adding: “I’ll be even happier when we find diamonds.”
But Ms Feldman, whose motivation in floating the miner is to find the 12 gemstones of the breastplate worn by the High Priest in the
Under stock exchange listing rules, she is prevented from selling her shares for two years. Her recent bid to gain an exemption from the restriction failed.
High-profile
But the miner’s top 20 shareholders boasts other high-profile investors.
Perpetual Trustees, which landed four million shares in the 10 million shae float, is believed to have crystallized a $3.5 million profit on its $800,000 investment, selling 3.9 million shares at $1.10 each.
James Packer and the George Soros group are also believed to have landed a stake in the hotly sought-after offering.
The debut was reminiscent of that of Me Gutnick’s diamond hopeful, Astro Mining, which last September was reinstated to the boards at a 20-fold premium to its 20c placement price.
On its first day of trade, Astro finished at $4.10, booking Mr Gutnick a $70 million profit. Yesterday, Astro closed steady at $3.60.
However, his sister has now come close to upstaging the St Kilda mining magnet in the diamond stakes, but Joe is also building one of
Diamond explorer and pittado miner, Diamond Rose NL has set its sights on two West Australian diamond explorers, Stiker Resources NL and Dioro Exploration NL. If successful, the takeover will represent a major expansion of Diamond Rose’s position in the
The bid is linked with the problems besetting Striker’s majority (20%) shareholder, Australian Gold Fields NL, which has fallen into administration after disputes with financiers Prudential Bache International and Rothschild
Diamond Rose proposes to offer one share in Diamond Rose for every ten Striker shares. If Diamond Rose were to acquire 100% of Striker this would result in the issue of 10,194,085 new Diamond Rose shares (if no options are exercised) taking the issued capital of Diamond Rose to 133,604,924 shares.
The 1-for-10 scrip offer for Striker values the company at $5.1 million, nearly half its market value of $9 million.
Both offers are subject to a minimum acceptance of 50.1%. In the case of Striker the offer states that none of Striker’s financiers, including Australian Gold Fields, can demand repayment of any loan facilities.
Dioro shareholders will be offered six Diamond Rose shares for one Dioro share, valuing the target at $4,954,091 compared to its present value of $3.69 million.
The December agreement between Diamond Rose and Dioro, in which Diamond Rose agreed to earn a range of interests in the King George and Casuarina tenements by paying $1.25 million and agreeing to spend $2.5 million on exploration, has been rescinded.
If Diamond Rose acquired 100% of Dioro this would result in the issue of 9 million new Diamond Rose shares lifting the issued capital to 133,319,022 shares.
Diamond Rose is currently evaluating Dighem survey anomalies at Striker’s Upper Beta Creek where at least four kimberlite pipes have been discovered by recent drilling and sampling, including Ashmore 1 and 2. Striker announced in December that it would commence a mining feasibility on the latter two pipes to assess their commercial potential.
Diamond Rose said the application of its resources to the area would be of immense benefit to shareholders.
Yes we have no Pittado
While most miners have been swimming against the tide in recent times, pioneering pittado miner, Diamond Rose NL, seems to have made a nice little earner out of their “unique” gemstone.
Following last year’s successful sale of one kilogram of Pittado to a
Duneier, one of the largest privately owned manufacturers of jewellery in the
The gemstones, which hail from the company’s Rocklea project in
Duneier plans to introduce Diamond Rose’s gemstones to world markets and will market the range in the United States, Canada and Japan through television promotion on television shopping networks and retail outlets.
The first
Diamond Rose said that as a result of this agreement it is anticipated that the company will show an increase in gross revenues of a minimum of US$4 million over the next 18 months.
Diamond Rose Chairperson, Pnina Feldman, said: “The Diamond Rose story lends itself to home shopping style of presentation of a company and its products. Our company has a colourful and rich background which will complement the appeal of our uniquely Australian products.
“Focusing on the gemstones’ association with
Commenting on the agreement, Duneier’s President, Marc Duneier, said: “It is very rare that a new gemstone is discovered that has such an extensive appeal.
“Pittado has a deep magic green colour that appeals across all market sectors and is ideal for television promotion”
“The Australian connection adds myth and mystery – the stone and the country have a great story to tell and we will be promoting the Diamond Rose Collection at a time of strong consumer attention and interest in
Australian Jeweller June 2001 By Suzanne Male
Until recently no one could work out exactly what it was, but now the Australian Pittado as cemented itself a place in the international gemstone inventory.
It wasn’t the most scientific way of discovering the world’s newest gem. A geologist’s assistant was relieving himself following a long day in the field searching for signs of diamond deposits in the Western Australian desert about five years ago. “He managed to wash some of the dirt off the top of the stone,” uncovering the strange green mineral, tells Diamond Rose NL general manager Sholom Feldman, explaining with a laugh, well, out in the middle of the outback there’s not quite the facilities that a normal person has.”
Lucky really, since the accidental discovery has added a new dimension to Diamond Rose’s diamond exploration and gemstone mining. “Our company has been mining coloured gemstones for years in Australia’s outback, but ironically the one that we exclusively hold we never intended to find,” says Feldman, who with mother and Diamond Rose executive director, Pnina Feldman, exhibited the stone at the ICA trade fair in Sydney last month.
Discovering the stone was the easy part. Finding out exactly what the stone was presented a bigger problem. Diamond Rose had the stone analysed by several different experts but the experts could not agree on its definition. “The stone threw even the most experienced gemologists off balance.” Feldman says. “We had people looking at it and saying that’s chrysoprase, that’s nephrite, no that’s a jade. All different types, but nobody really knew what it was.”
In the end, Diamond Rose has a university do a petrological study and the consensus was this stone was like no other. It was identified as quartz, coloured by chromium fuchsite. “Therefore, it is really a gemstone in its own right, as under microscopic analysis, one can clearly observe its unique, non fibrous crystalline structure,” Feldman says. “But the way that all of that comes together is quite unique because it doesn’t look like anything else as well. It doesn’t look like a lot of other stones. So we were sort of at a loss.”
Then, of course, the new gemstone needed a name. No problem. Just so happens the Bible has a spare one. Like the gemologists who couldn’t positively identify the stone, the Bible has a similar gemstone quandary. Commentators disagree on the type of stone the Bible is talking about when it refers to the Pittado, the second and green gemstone on the High Priest of Israel’s breastplate.
As devout Jews, the Feldmans knew the passage in the Bible and the debate that has surrounded it and decided Pittado was an ideal name for their new green gem.
The Pittado, which come in a range of green colours, has already caused a rush after appearing on the Home Shopping Network in the
And it looks like Diamond Rose’s success is not about to end. “We think we’re pretty close to another mayor diamond find,” in the
The should please Diamond Rose’s high caliber partners BHP and DeBeers, who are already involved in Diamond Rose’s diamond exploration in two major projects. “They’re putting in money, could be in the tens of millions of dollars,” Pnina Feldman explained, “depending {on the projects’ progress}, putting in more as the project goes.”