Friday Flashback

THE WEEKLY WRAP: Everybody hit the pub early last week as the bourse closed in positive territory once again ending the market’s best week since February.

The scene was set for a jolly Friday with good news from both Europe in the form of the release of better-than-expected euro-area manufacturing and consumer confidence data and some hearty corporate earnings reports in the US.

The news wasn’t all good for the resources sector however with the big miners leading a downward charge with BHP Billiton (ASX: BHP) down 10 cents to $33.74, Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) down 18 cents at $60.05 and Fortescue Metals Group (ASX: FMG) six cents lower at $3.47.

It would appear the continued depressing outlook for the iron ore price is still troubling all ends of town.

The Aussie market had a fun start to the week, following positive leads from the United States with buyers more keen on big bank stocks than they were on big mining stocks.

Fairfax’s Trading Room put this down to, “investors prepare for the US Federal Reserve to announce an end to quantitative easing stimulus measures when the Federal Open Market Committee meets mid-week.”

Among the juniors Gold Road Resources (ASX: GOR) found another cluster of Yamarna gold targets, Rox Resources (ASX: RXL) extended the strike of its Teena zinc prospect, and Goldphyre Resources (ASX: GPH) moved into the Fraser Range next door to Sirius (ASX: SIR).

Doray Minerals (ASX: DRM) pulled a Deborah Harry and kept everybody ‘Hangin’ on the telephone’ by requesting an extension to its trading halt in regards to the hush-hush “potential corporate combination”, possibly with Mutiny Gold (ASX: MYG), but without confirming anything.

All that changed on Tuesday as the merger was announced, which will result in Mutiny becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Doray.

Mutiny non-executive chairman Allan Brown will join the Doray Board as a non-executive director, while Peter Alexander is to remain as non-executive chairman.

The two companies believe the merger will create a mid-tier gold company with a complementary portfolio of high-grade Western Australian production, development and exploration assets.

The combined group will have a Mineral Resource base in excess of one million ounces of gold at a grade of 7.7 grams per tonne gold plus 27,000 tonnes of copper at a grade of 0.9 per cent copper.

Elsewhere the gloves were off in the Orbis Gold (ASX: OBS) – SEMAFO stoush with the takeover target announcing it has decided to ditch the Subscription and Co‐Operation Deed, under which Greenstone Resources proposed to subscribe for US$20 million of Orbis Gold shares at a price of 42 cents per share – upping the ante to complete the raising at 60 cents per share.

Life hasn’t been this exciting in the junior resources sector in ages!

At the Mining 2014 Conference in Brisbane Dory managing director Allan Kelly exclusively told The Roadhouse he believed the merger deal with Mutiny, “combines two great projects in one producing asset in Andy Well and a development asset at Deflector.”

While at Mining 2014, The Roadhouse was able to ambush Orbis Gold managing director Peter Spiers after he gave his presentation.

Spiers didn’t offer much lip service to the SEMAFO offer during his talk and wasn’t what you would describe as being overly keen on discussing it, except to say that Orbis had rejected the offer simply because it believe it to great undervalue the company.