Ventana Gold (VEN.to): Eike winning

Despite Ventana Gold's (VEN.to) head honcho Stephen Orr jawboning it to Reuters yesterday and talking about the "some different interest" from as yet mysterious third parties and the "value that (the stock) would be able to gain over the next 12 to 18 months" if VEN were left to get on with things, we return to the eternal baseline of MoneyTalksBullshitWalks and the VEN.to price chart below, which includes the share price action since Eike's Nov 17th offer and the price ($12.63) the Brazilian dude is willing to pay via the red line:

For the first time since then, VEN.to closed today under the offer price (a penny to be exact, at $12.62). With the Feb 14th offer deadline now looming closer, this war of attrition is starting to sway the way of the Latino team. Tudo bem.

Disclosure: No position, cos The IKN Weekly took the $13.51 profits in November. So there.

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Let's see if you can spot the similarities too, dear reader.

Here's IKN on Friday May 28th:

How many Ventana Gold (VEN.to) shares does Eike Batista Own?

Answer: 19,306,000.

This number went up this week, as Eike's 63X Master Fund vehicle added 1.1m shares to its pile on Wednesday (and filed them as quickly as yesterday).

Ventana Gold Corp. (VEN)						As of May 27th, 2010
Filing Date	Transaction Date	Insider Name	Ownership Type	Securities	Nature of transaction	# or value acquired or disposed of	Unit Price
May 27/10	May 26/10	63X Master Fund	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	1,100,000	$10.620

Strangely and weirdly, this puts the 63X Master Fund's total holding at 19.82% of shares outstanding, assuming that the May 13th total of 97,409,131 shares out is still the exact correct one. As many out there will know, special things start happening to Canadian stocks if one single holder goes above 20% so it's not really surprising to see Eike's crew stop just under that magic number.

Now that the land deal is done with Los Gelvez, the question now is "when" Eike makes his move and buys out VEN.to, not "if". My best guess would be after the Presidential elections, but WTFDIK? Anyway, to round off here's the current state of full dilution at the company (the warrants and options are all in the money). I wonder if mgmt will have time to squeeze in a final round of bonus options?

shares out: 97,409,131
warrants: 3,644,000
options: 6,327,000

And now here's the Ventana Gold (VEN.to) news release on Monday May 31st:

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - 05/31/10) - Ventana Gold Corp. (TSX:VEN - News) ("Ventana" or "the Company") is pleased to announce that 63X Master Fund ("63X"), its largest shareholder, has acquired ownership and control of an additional 1.1 million common shares of Ventana through the facilities of the Toronto Stock Exchange, bringing its aggregate ownership in Ventana to 19,306,000 common shares. 63X paid cash consideration of $10.62 per share, for aggregate consideration of $11,682,000.

Ventana Chairman Richard Warke said: "We are pleased to see 63X increase its position in our company. This demonstrates their confidence in the value of our assets and the strength of our business plan. As our largest shareholder, they have shown tremendous support to our Board and management team."

How many Ventana Gold (VEN.to) shares does Eike Batista own?

Answer: 19,306,000.

This number went up this week, as Eike's 63X Master Fund vehicle added 1.1m shares to its pile on Wednesday (and filed them as quickly as yesterday).

Ventana Gold Corp. (VEN)						As of May 27th, 2010
Filing Date	Transaction Date	Insider Name	Ownership Type	Securities	Nature of transaction	# or value acquired or disposed of	Unit Price
May 27/10	May 26/10	63X Master Fund	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	1,100,000	$10.620

Strangely and weirdly, this puts the 62X Master Fund's total holding at 19.82% of shares outstanding, assuming that the May 13th total of 97,409,131 shares out is still the exact correct one. As many out there will know, special things start happening to Canadian stocks if one single holder goes above 20% so it's not really surprising to see Eike's crew stop just under that magic number.

Now that the land deal is done with Los Gelvez, the question now is "when" Eike makes his move and buys out VEN.to, not "if". My best guess would be after the Presidential elections, but WTFDIK? Anyway, to round off here's the current state of full dilution at the company (the warrants and options are all in the money). I wonder if mgmt will have time to squeeze in a final round of bonus options?

shares out: 97,409,131
warrants: 3,644,000
options: 6,327,000

Eike Batista interviewed by Charlie Rose

A fascinating interview on this link here. Thanks to reader DM for sending the link. Highly recommended.

Ventana Gold (VEN.to): Master Blaster

Eike (for it is he)

Today's insider trades filings on Ventana Gold (VEN.to) are interesting and explain why VEN went through a moment of intraday weakness yesterday that saw the stock under $9. Here's the segment from Canadian Insider:

Ventana Gold Corp. (VEN)						As of December 10th, 2009
Filing Date	Transaction Date	Insider Name	Ownership Type	Securities	Nature of transaction	# or value acquired or disposed of	Unit Price
Dec 10/09	Dec 04/09	63X Master Fund	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Disposition in the public market	-1,000,000	$10.200
Dec 10/09	Oct 15/09	63X Master Fund	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	2,155,300	$6.021
Dec 10/09	Oct 05/09	63X Master Fund	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	4,875,300	$5.467
Dec 10/09	Aug 12/09	63X Master Fund	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	1,814,200	$4.271
Dec 10/09	Jul 22/09	63X Master Fund	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	00 - Opening Balance-

The 63X Master Fund is the investment fund run by our pal and Brazilian squillionaire Eike Batista. What we see here is the 8.8m or so shares that Eike bought mostly (8.2m) back in July (and for some reason only registered in August/October) period have finally been filed (and by the looks of things he's not going to sweat over a CAD$1,000 late filing fee, is he?). But we also see that he's dumped a million of the shares in the last few days. The reason for this apparent vote of no confidence must be the legal action that's surfaced between VEN.to and local owners of the 'La Bodega' property, Sociedad Mineral La Bodega (SMLB) and its controllers, the Gelvez family of the Colombian region in question.

Not much doubt that it's a net negative to see Batista selling like this, however much you want to spin it as "wisely taking profits, still owns plenty" to feed some illusion or other. BUT, one thing that does strike me is that all of a suddenly sudden, Batista (via his 63X Master Fund) is suddenly keen on being transparent about his trades when previously he didn't give a damn about filing his inside position correctly. One guess here....and it is a pure guess...is that Eike wants to get a few nerves flowing through the marketplace about VEN.to stock. He'd actually like to see the price drop. If that's so, as he currently owns 7.8m or so VEN shares he's either shooting himself in the foot (virtually impossible) or he's looking to add at a lower price later.

OK, this could go down as an extrapolated conspiracy theory and Occam and his razor may well disagree with me here. Another thing to note is that the 1m share sale puts Eike under 10% owned and no longer an insider of record (i.e. he can do what he wants out of the public gaze) But Eike isn't one of the world's most successful investors by sheer chance, y'knowz.

So the bottom line is that this story has a long way to travel yet, but Eike has added a very short term negative to the mix with his sale. DYODD.

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.