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China pours billions into Japanese stock market
By Agence France-Presse
via Business Recorder, Karachi, Pakistan
Sunday, June 24, 2012
http://www.brecorder.com/top-news/1-front-top-news/63891-china-pours-bil...
TOKYO -- Europe's financial turmoil has seen the Chinese government quietly pour tens of billions of dollars into Japan's stock market, analysts say, despite the neighbours' lingering historical animosity.
For years the two Asian powerhouses have eyed each other suspiciously with frequent diplomatic spats flaring over territorial claims and longstanding disputes, largely stemming from Japan's wartime record.
But with economic ties improving and Europe in a debt crisis, an ever more practical Beijing is buying up shares of Japanese firms as it looks for safer places to park its mountainous foreign-exchange reserves, the world's largest.
A fund known as OD05 Omnibus, widely viewed as linked to Beijing, was a major shareholder in 174 Japanese firms by the end of March, including names such as Toyota and Nikon, said a survey by the Nikkei business daily.
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Prophecy Platinum Announces Wellgreen Preliminary Economic Assessment:
38% Pre-Tax IRR, $3.0 Billion NPV, and a 37-Year Mine Life
Company Press Release
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada -- Prophecy Platinum Corp. (TSX-V: NKL, OTC-QX: PNIKF, Frankfurt: P94P) reports the results of an independent NI 43-101-compliant preliminary economic assessment for its fully owned Wellgreen nickel-copper-platinum group metals project in the Yukon Territory.
The independent assessment, prepared by Tetra Tech, evaluated a base case of an open-pit mine (with a mining rate of 111,500 tonnes per day), an on-site concentrator (with a milling rate of 32,000 tonnes per day), and an initial capital cost of $863 million. The project is expected to produce (in concentrate) 1.959 billion pounds of nickel, 2.058 billion pounds of copper, and 7.119 million ounces of platinum, palladium, and gold during a mine life of 37 years with an average strip ratio of 2.57.
The financial highlights of the preliminary economic assessment, shown in U.S. dollars, are as follows:
Payback period: 3.55 years
Initial capital investment: $863 million
IRR pre-tax (100% equity): 38 percent
NPV pre-tax (8% discount): $3 billion
Mine life: 37 years
Total mill feed: 405.3 million tonnes
Mill throughput: 32,000 tonnes per day
Prophecy Chairman John Lee says: "We are pleased with the preliminary economic assessment results. The numbers indicate that Wellgreen is one of most exciting mineral projects in the Yukon. The company is drilling to upgrade and expand the resource base. The infrastructure is excellent as the project is only 1,400 meters in altitude and 14 kilometers from the paved Alaska Highway, which leads to the Haines deep seaport. Discussions are under way with support from local stakeholders regarding permitting and logistics."
For the complete press release, please visit:
http://prophecyplat.com/news_2012_june18_prophecy_platinum_announces_res...
The paper put the value of its Japan investments at a record 3.58 trillion yen ($45 billion).
The survey showed the fund's shareholdings have more than tripled since 2008, when the collapse of Wall Street titan Lehman Brothers triggered an unprecedented shock to the global financial system.
The ownership of Omnibus, reportedly based in Australia, has never been publicly acknowledged.
But dealers view it as being backed by China's sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corp. (CIC), and charged with helping manage some of Beijing's more than $3.0 trillion foreign currency war chest.
"When Europe is in such financial turmoil, Beijing needs to diversify its investment destinations," said Tsuyoshi Ueno, senior economist at NLI Research Institute in Tokyo. "China has so much in foreign currency reserves, and they need to invest it in blue-chip companies."
The CIC's chairman has reportedly said the fund was scaling back its European equity and bond holdings, telling the Wall Street Journal this month that "there is a risk that the eurozone may fall apart and that risk is rising."
Japan's economy has struggled for years, but it is increasingly seen as a port in the storm for investors, while Europe struggles to rein in its finances and questions swirl about a solid recovery in the United States.
Omnibus's portfolio includes a 1.9 percent stake in Toyota, a 2.2 percent holding in rival automaker Honda, a 1.9 percent share of camera giant Nikon, and a 2.5 percent stake in construction machinery maker Komatsu, the Nikkei survey said.
A Toyota spokeswoman declined comment on individual holdings of its stock, saying it was "up to investors what shares they invest in."
The Nikkei figures come at a time when Tokyo and Beijing forge ever closer economic ties, two years after China wrested the title of world's second-largest economy from Japan, a longtime export powerhouse.
Recent Bank of Japan data showed China has become a major holder of Japanese government and corporate debt, outpacing the United States and Britain.
In March, China, which is Japan's largest trading partner, approved Tokyo buying its government bonds, a move that analysts said appeared to be the first time a major economy had bought debt directly from Beijing.
The Asian powers have also started direct trading between the Chinese yuan and the yen to ease cross-border business, including corporate acquisitions which have often been completed using dollars.
The agreement the yen is the only major currency other than the greenback to trade directly against the yuan comes as Beijing continues its long-term bid to turn the yuan into a global unit rivalling the dollar.
A Chinese fund manager said Omnibus quietly invests in a cross-section of corporate Japan, but deliberately keeps its stake well below majority ownership.
However, "there is nothing wrong with the Chinese investment, and it's not bad news for Japanese companies," said Yasuyoshi Masuda, an economics professor at Japan's Toyo University.
He acknowledged Japan should be wary of Chinese government investment in firms with links to the military or secret technology, said that otherwise "Japan's stock market should welcome foreign capital investment."
"It's not like the Chinese fund owns more than 50 percent of a major Japanese firm," he added.
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Sona Discovers Potential High-Grade Gold Mineralization
at Blackdome in British Columbia -- 13.6g over 1.5 Meters
From a Company Press Release
November 22, 2011
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- With its latest surface diamond drilling program at its 100-percent-owned, formerly producing Blackdome gold mine in southern British Columbia, Sona Resources Corp. has discovered a potentially high-grade gold-mineralized area, with one hole intersecting 13.6 grams of gold in 1.5 meters of core drilling.
"We intersected a promising new mineralized zone, and we feel optimistic about the assay results," says Sona's president and CEO, John P. Thompson. "We have undertaken an aggressive exploration program that has tested a number of target zones. Our discovery of this new gold-bearing structure is significant, and it represents a positive development for the company."
Sona aims to bring its permitted Blackdome mill back into production over the next year and a half, at a rate of 200 tonnes per day, with feed from the formerly producing Blackdome mine and the nearby Elizabeth gold deposit property. A positive preliminary economic assessment by Micon International Ltd., based on a gold price of $950 per ounce over eight years, has estimated a cash cost of $208 per tonne milled, or $686 per gold ounce recovered.
For the company's complete press release, please visit:
http://www.sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR18_2011-opt.pdf
