Christian Candy's Solomon Capital makes offer for Metals Exploration

Solomon Capital has made a mandatory cash offer for Philippines focused miner Metals Exploration (LON:MTL), valuing the company at £35.76 million, or 13 pence per share.
Guernsey incorporated Solomon Capital was established in December 2008, for the purpose of investing in Metals Exploration and is beneficially wholly owned by property millionnaire Christian Candy.
Solomon, having acquired one Metals Exploration share from a single shareholder on 22 July 2010 at a price of 13 pence, is now interested, in aggregate, in 118,935,655 Metals Exploration shares, representing approximately 44.1% of the entire issued share capital.

Accordingly Solomon is required to make an offer for the remeining share capital of Metals Exploration.

Solomon has received letters of intent to accept the offer from certain Metals Exploration shareholders in respect of 24,343,903 shares (other than its own), representing approximately 9.03% of the capital.
Following the successful completion of the offer, Solomon intends to continue to work with the existing management team of Metals Exploration to secure appropriate funding for the development of a mine at the Runruno project in the Philippines, which Solomon continues to believe has the potential to generate long term shareholder value.
Metals Exploration, which said it would respond to the offer in “due course,” is engaged in acquisition and development of exploration properties in South East Asia. It is currently focused on the development of its Runruno gold and molybdenum project in the Philippines, following the completion of a definitive feasibility study in May 2010. The company is currently conducting a step-out drilling programme to demonstrate additional potential within the Runruno permit area.
Runruno has a JORC-compliant resource of 1.42 Moz of gold and 25.6 Mlb (million pounds) of molybdenum. The company confirmed an independently verified proven & probable mining reserve consisting of 780,000 oz gold and secured an environmental compliance certificate in March 2010. The results of feasibility study confirmed the viability of a project producing an average of 96,700 oz of gold per annum over 10.4 years with an estimated average operating cost of US$477/oz not including potential molybdenum credits.
Guernsey incorporated Solomon Capital was established in December 2008, for the purpose of investing in Metals Exploration and is beneficially wholly owned by property millionnaire Christian Candy.
Shares in Metals Exploration surged nearly 27% on the news to 13 pence.