You can see John Paulson's thought process. What with his highly touted gold fund only attracting minimal business (he's put up U$250m of the U$340m in capital so far from his own pocket), Paulson has worked out he needs more leverage to gold to get the punters to bite. Fair enough, because if you think about it for more than a second all that Paulson's gold strategy has offered 3rd parties so far is a 1:1 levered gold ETF....so why pay a fund manager his 2/20 when you can get precisely the same deal by buying the gold ETF (GLD) yourself?
So Paulson starts looking round for leverage and right at that time, guess who's hanging in NYC?
So Paulson starts looking round for leverage and right at that time, guess who's hanging in NYC?
RICK!
Yeeeeaaah baby, Rick van Alphabet in da house. The result is watching yet another $100m get thrown at the biggest gold confidence trick of the 21st century. Paulson, I really thought you were smarter than to be suckered in by a snakeoil salesman. Here's the NR, out last night:
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - 03/04/10) - NovaGold Resources Inc. (TSX:NG - News)(AMEX:NG - News) today announced that it is proposing to issue 18,181,818 common shares of the Company at a price of US$5.50 per common share for gross proceeds of US$99,999,999 (the "Offering") to several investment funds managed by Paulson & Co. Inc.
The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Offering to fund general exploration and development on the Company's advanced properties including Donlin Creek, Galore Creek and Rock Creek, its early-stage Ambler property, and for general corporate purposes, including funding yada yada continues here