Monday, July 20, 2009

Eike Batista and Ventana: A curious story today

So Eike...buying or not buying?

This morning, an outfit calling itself "63X Master Fund" of The Cayman Islands, apparently a branch of the Brazilian EBX holding company run by Brazilian metals billionaire Eike Batista (he of MMX among other companies) announced that it had bought 10.2% of Ventana Gold in the following way:

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL--(Marketwire - July 20, 2009) - 63X Master Fund ("63X"), of Unlgand House, Grand Cayman, KY1-1104, Cayman Islands, announces pursuant to National Instrument 62-103 that it acquired ownership and control of 8,210,900 common shares of Ventana Gold Corp. ("Ventana") in a private purchase from Ventana from common shares in treasury. The common shares purchased by 63X represent in aggregate approximately 10.2% of the 80,382,000 issued and outstanding common shares of Ventana reported by the Toronto Stock Exchange and Bloomberg.

Prior to the share acquisition, 63X did not own any common shares of Ventana; accordingly, as a result of this acquisition of common shares from Ventana, 63X now exercises yada yada continues here

You'll note we're not talking about an open market purchase or anything. Apparently these share came straight from company treasury and VEN.to would have to know about it. Except VEN.to didn't, according to the PR just published by Ventana. Here's the content:
Ventana Gold Corp. (TSX:VEN - News) ("Ventana" or "the Company") has not sold any common shares of the Company to 63X Master Fund, ("63X") of Unlgand House, Grand Cayman, KY1-1104, from treasury, as announced by 63X this morning, or otherwise and has had no communications with 63X to date. The current number of issued and outstanding shares of Ventana is 86,600,131.
So what's going on here? A crude attempt to move the market? Some communications breakdown? Sure smells fishy, whatever's at the bottom of this story. EBX even got the share count wrong, apparently. All rather weird.