Gold set to recover: Gutnick
Thursday 18 November 1999
The mining magnate Mr Joseph Gutnick said yesterday the bear market that had ravaged gold prices for years was about to end, as attitudes towards the precious commodity showed signs of improvement.
Mr Gutnick said a "feeling that gold has become more respectable" was helping to support prices, with an agreement by key central banks to slow the sale of their reserves providing a bulwark to declining gold values.
Speaking to reporters after the annual meeting of Gutnick Resources in Melbourne, Mr Gutnick predicted gold would remain at levels between $US285 and $US320 an ounce over the next few years.
The company, formally called Mt Kersey Mining, changed its name to Gutnick Resources in May.
Mr Gutnick declined to comment on the not-guilty verdict returned by the jury in the Mt Kersey insider-trading case on Tuesday, and added that his relationship with the broking firm J.B.Were and its head, Mr Terry Campbell, was sound.
Tension between Mr Gutnick and J.B.Were was sparked last year when audio tapes of a Were broker using anti-Semitic language to describe Mr Gutnick were heard during committal hearings.
The broker, Mr Gregory James Doyle, and the finance director of Mining Project Investors, Mr Alan Bartle Evans, were later charged with insider trading relating to their transactions in Mr Gutnick's Mt Kersey Mining in November1995. The pair were found not guilty two days ago, following a five-week trial.
Evidence of a warming of relations between Mr Gutnick and the house of Were was exhibited last month when a prospectus for the businessman's Capital Growth Resources Fund listed J.B.Were as one of several groups that had a link with the fund.
The fund will raise up to $US500million ($A761million) through a new global investment vehicle based in the Cayman Islands.
Following an overseas trip to spruik the fund to investors, Mr Gutnick said yesterday that better times were now ahead for gold.
"I think we will see a stabilising period; it may take a number of years, but then the new bull market in gold will develop a momentum," he said.
"All the elements are in place that we have ended the bear market. When bear markets in gold have ended in the past you've seen a number of years for it to base out and take off."
Mr Gutnick said large investors were still nervous about re-entering the gold market.
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