Share Dealings

This week’s prize for the most exquisitely timed share dealing must go to Gindalbie Metals director Lim Kim Chum, who picked up 145,000 shares in the junior miner for $80,000 on June 15. Gindalbie is touted as one of the most promising junior mining stocks (see Charlie Aitken’s column today). Moreover, it is about to be re-rated on the back of the yet-to-be-confirmed discoveries at Australian Mining Investments in Queensland.
Nevertheless, despite the new round of enthusiasm for resources stocks gripping the market this week, the bulk of the significant share dealings on the ASX were non-mining, with strong buying in industrials and financials.

MIR, the investment fund linked with Harry Triguboff’s nephew Michael Triguboff, has emerged as a substantial shareholder of agricultural tax scheme company Great Southern Plantations, with a holding of about 5%.

Fidelity Investments, one of the world’s biggest investment companies, bought two parcels of Australian stock. It lifted its stake in struggling winemaker McGuigan Wines from 7.9% to 9% and emerged as a substantial 5% shareholder in the clothes retailer Billabong .

Separately, the Concord investment group bravely returned to the problem-plagued James Hardie group, announcing it had become a substantial shareholder with 5.1% of the asbestos-related stock.

Although the majority of shareholder action this week was related to big purchase orders, National Australia Bank broke the trend, lightening its commitment to the toll road company ConnectEast. NAB dropped its holding from 6.6% to 5.6%.

Among private investors, Richard Pratt’s private investment company Thorney Holdings also took some profits on its holding in Webjet, the online travel agent that has threatened industry majors such as Flight Centre. Thorney reduced its Webjet holding drop from 17% to 14%.

Speaking of billionaire private families, the Liberman family also restructured its 25% stake in the Melbourne technology company Eiffel Technologies; however the family retains the same number of shares in the group.

Mt Gambier based transport tycoon Allan Scott tightened his grip on the Scott Corporation, lifting his controlling interest from 64% to 65%.

Always on the hunt for a bargain, the GPG group moved to buy more stock in perennial tech hopeful MYOB, increasing its holding 1% to 8%.

Finally, Thomas Dawson a director of Anvil Mining, has paid more than $36,000 for 5000 shares in the Australian/Canadian miner lifting his stake to 15,000 shares. Anvil Mining has its primary listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Each Anvil share on the ASX represents one-tenth of a share in AVM’s Toronto listing.

A fortnight ago in Eureka Report’s Sleepless in Salamanca series, we reported Anvil Mining has a price/earnings multiple of 2. This was an error; the P/E is calculated on roughly 10 times its ASX price because of the 1:10 correspondence with the Toronto listing.