Privately owned investment group La Mancha has created a new mining fund, which would target opportunities in the “fragmented” gold mining sector, chairperson Naguib Sawaris announced on Monday.
The first closing of the fund had been completed with the receipt of all La Mancha’s gold mining assets, as well as an investment of $100-million from a strategic partner now investing alongside the Sawaris family.
The fund currently has more than $1.4-billion in assets and is assessing a number of new opportunities, with its primary investment focus being gold and precious metals mining, but with the flexibility to invest in battery metals.
The fund takes “significant” stakes in junior mineral resource companies with “strong managerial and geological potential to implement a three-to-five-year value creation strategy.
“Creating a fund is the natural consequence of what we have been doing since we vended-in our operational assets into Evolution and Endeavour in 2015. Transitioning to a fund structure and welcoming new investors is timely when we are seeing opportunities in a gold mining sector which is fragmented and needs further consolidation,” said Sawaris.
La Mancha Capital Advisory would advise the Luxembourg-based fund, supported by an advisory committee, chaired by Sawaris, that included several well-known mining personalities.