History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes ... for those who did not get involved with Bre-X, here is another chance, before somebody falls out of a helicopter:
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COMPANIES & FINANCE ASIA-PACIFIC: Sunken gold may resurrect Dong Ah
Financial Times; Dec 8, 2000
By REUTERS: AGENCY MATERIAL
Trading in the shares of Dong Ah Construction, the bankrupt South Korean company, was suspended yesterday amid tales of sunken treasure said to be worth billions of dollars, Reuters reports from Seoul and Moscow.
Stock exchange officials ordered the suspension after two days of sharp rises fuelled by media reports that the company had found a ship with treasure near South Korea's maritime border with Japan.
Shares in Dong Ah, which went bankrupt last month, ended at Won410 on Wednesday - a two-day jump of 30 per cent.
Dong Ah filed a brief clarification to the Korea Stock Exchange, but gave no details about its allegedly secretive search for a sunken vessel laden with gold.
The Russian ship Dmitry Donskoi is thought to have sunk in the region laden with gold bars during the Russo-Japanese war in the early 20th century. Media reports were quick to seize on the possibility that it had been found.
The reports said the gold bars could be worth as much as Won150,000bn (Dollars 125bn), though at current prices that would put its payload at an improbable 14,000 tonnes, some 13 per cent of all gold ever mined.
"The Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute has been searching under a contract with Dong Ah signed in October 1999," Dong Ah said in its response to exchange officials yesterday. "We will immediately inform the KSE of any findings the institute makes."
The institute was not available for comment.
A local securities company said if Dong Ah had found the famous ship and could collect a finder's fee, its shares could leap to Won70,000 and the builder would emerge from bankruptcy. But it is a long shot. A Russian naval officer dismissed the suggestions of a large gold shipment as "utter nonsense".
Sergei Klimovsky, scientific secretary of the central naval museum in St Petersburg, said it was out of the question that the Dmitry Donskoi was carrying gold bars when it went down on May 28, 1905.
Copyright: The Financial Times Limited
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