I think Q3 financials are be due at the end of this week. Hopefully the NR or the MD&A will provide some sorta update on things. It has been a while for any type of official update from the company (on anything at all). As such, it is completely unclear what the status is with the Fortis/BNP Paribas financing situation.
I was listening to an investment manager on tv today, and he was briefly describing synidcated financing deals. Basically, he was saying that a syndicated deal is when the primary bank raises the funds by getting several other banks to subscribe to the deal. This helped in confirming my own (limited) understanding of syndicated deals. He also said that syndicated deals became very difficult to put together post the recent credit crisis blow up.
That kinda reminded me of a note Century included in their September 2'08 NR (in explaining the Fortis deal), as follows:
"The drawdown is not conditional upon syndication;"
I'm not sure if other people noticed it as well. That note would suggest that Fortis/PNP Paribas was/is planning to fund all of the debt directly (through their own funds), without seeking out other banks.
If such is still the case then it makes a major difference in this environment. Actually, it's a huge difference.
I guess we can only hope that things are still progressing forward alright.
2 comments:
FWIW!
Thank you for the email. You make several very good points. The current markets (credit, equity, debt) are indeed in a severe situation. If this were simply a period in world markets characterized by bad news, that would be one thing. But what we are seeing is rampant uncertainty, which from an investors point of view is worse than bad news. In Century's particular situation, we do have a viable project, and of all the metals to be mining gold is probably the most attractive. Having said that, the company has not yet signed any debt deals (bridge or otherwise) to put Lamaque back into production. We are currently negotiating a bridge deal, and hope to be able to make an announcement in the near future, but as you know, there are no guarantees in this respect. Regarding Fortis, we have completed the due diligence phase and expect this proposal to go to the Fortis Credit Committee sometime in early December. As you point out, management and the Board are also considering other options in the event that adequate financing cannot be secured. Unfortunately, I do not have any details about such contingency plans. We are all still working very hard on the assumption that the company will get financing, and will resume operations at Lamaque.
I'm sorry I cannot give you more specific information right now, but we will make any necessary announcements when there is a material development.
In the meantime, please let me know if you have any other questions or need anything else.
Thank you
Brent
Rhump, thank you very much for the update.
With us potentially moving beyond the technical due diligence phase, if the discussions (with Fortis/BNP Paribas) are still focused on the deal being non-syndicated (which of course there are no guarantees that it is) then it likely means that we only have 1 major hurdle remaining - credit committee approval. IF we get that then we might be looking at only standard paperwork requirements to reach drawdown. Let's hope we get a Christmas present from the credit committee.
It's good that they are still working on contingency options also. This is just as important as the primary plan, especially in this environment.
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