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Thursday, July 16, 2009.

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Shannon O'Donnell.

Making headlines today:

The US commerce secretary plans to bring up "fair treatment" for employees of foreign companies in meetings with Chinese officials today. This is in a sign of international concern over the detention of four Rio Tinto executives.

Stern Hu, an Australian citizen, and three Chinese colleagues were detained this month for stealing state secrets to aid Rio in price negotiations for iron ore, which is used in steelmaking. At least one Chinese steel executive is also detained and the probe has reached many of the largest mills.

The murkiness of state secret laws puts foreign investors potentially at risk when dealing with state-owned entities and potentially sensitive economic information.

US commerce secretary Gary Locke said that transparency, assurances and confidence was needed that people working for multinational companies would be treated fairly.

Investec Asset Management fund managers specialising in commodities and resources said that gold equities were likely to significantly outperform the gold price in the second half of 2009.

Global commodities and resources head Bradley George said that, while its outlook for the gold price was positive, the company currently favoured investments in gold companies over those in the physical metal, or gold-backed exchange-traded funds.

It expected a 20 to 30% return from gold equities relative to their current valuations for the balance of the year. This was compared with an upside of between 10 and 15% on the price of the precious metal itself.

The company currently has more than 2,5-billion-dollars invested in commodities and resources equities. It expects the precious metal to trade between 880 and 1 100 dollars an ounce during 2009.

Also making headlines:

JSE-listed Merafe Resources expects to report an interim loss.
Junior-miner Platmin will list on the JSE next week.
Anglo Platinum warns that its earnings could drop by up to 75%.
And, UK-based KIG Mining secures 10-million-Euro to expand its Silverstream mine.

That's a round up of news making headlines today. For more on these and other stories please visit miningweekly.com.