Listed Mining Companies
The global economic downturn has turned some black economically empowered (BEE) mining investment into dust finer than mine-dump sand. Absa Capital-Barclays investment banker Cliff Zephyrine warned earlier this year that 2009 was “the year of reckoning for BEE mining deals in South Africa”, and warned of a subprimelike string of bank write-downs, or worse. The share price of JSE-listed black-owned coal-mining company South African Coal Holdings plunged more than 65% after the company announced that it would cease operating for three months and place its mines on care and maintenance. “It’s like you have been stripped of your clothes,” is how former platinum mine truck operator Klaas Matlangoe described the current mining industry downturn in an article in the Johannesburg Sunday newspaper, City Press.
