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Gold/Mining/Energy : BRO-X MINERALS (C.BXO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FARcom who wrote (271)	9/18/1998 9:17:00 AM
From: alan holman	Respond to of 363

Friday, September 18, 1998 Nesbitt Burns ordered to turn over Bre-X tapes By SANDRA RUBIN The Financial Post Nesbitt Burns Inc. was ordered yesterday to turn over copies of all conference calls in which its star mining analyst discussed Bre-X Minerals Ltd. before the gold fraud exploded on markets last year. Its analyst Egizio Bianchini was one of Bre-X's biggest boosters on Bay Street. Justice Warren Winkler in Ontario Court, general division, said tapes or transcripts must be handed over to lawyers leading a class action suit so they can be used in certification arguments next month. Harvey Strosberg, who is leading the Ontario suit, said it is a big development for the 10,000 Nesbitt customers who bought and sold Bre-X shares through the brokerage, and may have relied on the analyst's advice. "This is significant for shareholders because we will now get to hear, in Mr. Bianchini's own words, what he was telling the world about Bre-X even as the whole thing had started to come crashing down," said Strosberg. Nesbitt lawyer John Campion said there are "just a few" tapes, and only portions of each one deal with Bre-X. He said the brokerage is prepared to hand them over. In arguing for the release of all the tapes, Strosberg quoted part of a March 24 conference call held as rumors of blank drill results by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. started to rattle North American markets. The transcript suggests Bianchini reassured jittery brokers and investors that SNC-Lavalin Inc.'s Kilborn Engineering, which had issued a resource estimate of 71 million ounces of gold at Busang, stood behind the project. "Kilborn, to my knowledge, has audited the process from drill casing all the way down to getting the final assay number," Bianchini is quoted as saying. "They've not sat on every hole, they were supplied with core from Bre-X, that's the case. But they have gone through the process. So Kilborn's reputation stands behind the process, it stands behind the numbers." The transcript also suggests Bianchini told brokers and clients three different entities had looked at the Indonesian deposit and their conclusions "are very similar to Bre-X's, if not better." Meanwhile, the interim receiver of Bre-X affiliates Bresea Resources Ltd. and Bro-X Minerals Ltd. said yesterday he has served notice on Bro-X that Bresea wants to redeem its two million preferred shares, which would essentially wipe out the $900,000 in Bro-X's cash reserves. "We don't want Bro-X to enter into any transactions that would see the value diminished," said Kurt Bonokoski of Price Waterhouse Coopers Inc. in Calgary. The $900,000 would be added to the $26 million in cash Bresea has on its books. Bro-X's interests in two properties in Indonesia will still probably not be enough to cover the balance of what Bresea is owed for the preferred shares, he said. Bonokoski said Bresea will also ask the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta for permission to sell the Calgary office building that housed Bre-X and to sell Bresea's remaining interests in Indonesia. The building is worth about $2.3 million.