Not gold, but on point>>>Soros has big stake in Apex Silver -NYT
NEW YORK, March 26 (Reuters) - Long before Warren Buffett made his well-publicized bet on
silver, international financier George Soros bought a big stake in a silver mine, the New York Times
reported Thursday.
Along with his brother, Paul, Soros controls nearly 20 percent of Apex Silver Mines Ltd (SIL - news),
which explores for silver and develops mines, the Times said.
The company, based in the Cayman Islands, has an open pit mine in Bolivia that it says ''may constitute
one of the largest known silver deposits in the world.''
Soros, through Quantum Industrial Partners, initially invested in Apex at the end of 1994, the paper
said.
And he's not alone. Another investor is Louis Bacon, chief executive of Moore Capital Management
and another hedge fund operator, the paper said. Bacon holds about 6.9 percent of Apex, a stake he
acquired in 1996.
Apex has been buying properties since 1993 and now has 27 nonproducing silver properties in South
America, Central America and Central Asia. But its focus is the San Cristobal mine in Bolivia, a mine
expected to begin producing silver in 2001.
In its prospectus for an initial public offering of stock on the American Stock Exchange in November,
Apex outlined the same case for silver as Buffett did recently when disclosing that his company,
Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa - news; BRKb - news), had bought 129.7 million ounces since July.
Apex said it had bought mining properties because of its belief ''that silver supply and demand
fundamentals were stronger than the then-prevailing price of silver suggested.''
Thomas Kaplan, chairman and chief executive of Apex, told the Times in a recent interview that the
company expects production costs to be especially low at San Cristobal - $2.63 an ounce. That should
''enable us to become the premier play in silver.''
With Buffett, Soros, etc, (leaking?) these stories in the press,
are they wanting to unload, or are they "in" for awhile? |
