People: Going for a kiwi corker

Veteran Aussie entrepreneur Ian Gowrie-Smith is pleasing his fans with a planned £6 million AIM float for New Zealand-focused Kea Petroleum. Serial investor Nigel Wray and Mark Knopfler of the band Dire Straits are among pre-float investors who have put some £7.2 million into Kea since September.

 Gowrie-Smith, an occasionally controversial player with a Midas touch who founded UK drug groups Medeva and SkyePharma and floated Papua New Guinea-focused Rift Oil three years ago, is chairman of Kea. The company boasts three exploration permits in New Zealand’s well-established Taranaki and Northlands basins holding an estimated 686 billion cubic feet of gas and 36.5 million barrels of oil.

Wray and Knopfler are among punters who both backed Rift Oil and enjoyed a threefold return when Talisman Energy took it over last year. They paid 5p a share for their pre-float Kea stakes.

That price compares with a hoped-for 8p for the AIM launch, says executive director David Lees, who like chief executive officer Dr David Bennett is a former Rift Oil luminary. He says Kea, which hopes to establish a £60 million AIM value with this float, has also applied for some offshore New Zealand licences.

Rift rewarded its backers handsomely, as did Medeva, though Gowrie-Smith quit SkyePharma after a shareholder revolt. One of Kea’s exploration wells is called Beluga and bulls see it as an appetising prospect.