Batero Gold closes $6.3 mln oversubscribed special warrant financing

Batero Gold Corp. (CVE:BAT) said Thursday it has closed an oversubscribed special warrant financing co-led by Raymond James and Cormark Securities.
The company said it also completed a non-brokered special warrant financing on the same terms as the brokered financing.
Batero therefore issued a total of 9.7 million special warrants at a price of 65 Canadian cents each, for total proceeds of $6.3 million.
Under the brokered financing, the company issued 9.1 million special warrants for proceeds of C$5.9 million, and 600,000 special warrants as part of the non-brokered financing for proceeds of C$390,000.
The company said the new funds will be used to advance its 100 percent-owned Quinchia project in Colombia, within a planned preliminary economic assessment, including additional drilling and metallurgical work, and for working capital and general corporate purposes.
Each special warrant under the offering entitles the holder to acquire, for no additional consideration, one unit, consisting of one Batero common share and one-half of one common share purchase warrant.
Each share purchase warrant entitles the holder to acquire an additional share at 90 Canadian cents during a two year period from the date of closing.
The company has agreed to try to obtain, within 60 days from closing, a receipt for a final short form prospectus qualifying the distribution of the units upon exercise of the special warrants.
If the prospectus qualification does not occur within the 60 days, each holder shall be entitled to receive, without payment of additional consideration, 1.1 units per special warrant, Batero said.
In connection with the financing, agents received a cash commission, an advisory fee, and compensation options.
In late March, Batero unveiled information on the oxide resource potential and metallurgical test work contained in its NI 43-101 compliant technical report recently filed for its Batero-Quinchia project in Colombia.
As part of Batero’s planned 2012 work program to evaluate the potential of a high grade development option at the La Cumbre porphyry deposit in the southern area of the mineral resources at the project, the company said it will look to improve project economics through low cost heap leach mineral processing.
The company is also advancing metallurgical test work and deposit modeling to increase oxide resources, gold grade and recovery.
The next stage of metallurgical testing should investigate means for improving cyanidation recovery.  The company said a test program will be undertaken to better understand the relationship between gold and sulphur grades with respect to gold recovery.
Within the technical report filed earlier in March, it showed zones of higher grade oxide resources, grading more than 1 gram per tonne (g/t) gold near surface at La Cumbre and at 11.42 g/t gold over 5.8 metres adjacent to the deposit, remain open to delineate.
Batero's $8 million, 12-month work program for the project in 2012 includes 15,000 metres of drilling, and an updated resource estimate within a PEA for the La Cumbre area of the property.