People: Konig sees the light

Financier and mining company chief Martyn Konig is a busy man just now. Not only is he executive chairman of European Goldfields, based in the Yukon, Canada, quoted on AIM and developing gold, copper, lead, zinc and silver projects in Greece and Romania, but he is also on the board of PhotonStar LED, a producer of eco-friendly light bulbs now contemplating an AIM float of its own.

Konig, formerly of NM Rothschild, Goldman Sachs and New Gold Inc, moved from a board seat to the top job at European Goldfields in the autumn, the better to handle £310 million of project financing for the company. He replaced the abrasive former chief executive officer David Reading and previous chairman Dimitrios Koutras, who masterminded the victorious campaign to win project approval from the Athens authorities and who remains a substantial shareholder.  

Konig hopes to make European Goldfields a ‘mid-tier gold producer’ by 2012. Meanwhile, he is giving counsel and support to physicist James McKenzie, who founded and runs PhotonStar, which makes light bulbs with a claimed life of 11 years.

McKenzie hopes to increase the company’s turnover tenfold to £2.3 million this year and says he is ‘looking at AIM very seriously’ and considering the possibility of reversing into an already-quoted shell. Funded hitherto by management and business angels, PhotonStar, whose products are protected by 124 patents, is now engaged in the national launch of a range of lighting products, which he claims are 85 per cent more energy efficient than conventional lighting equipment and 40 per cent better than the present generation of low-energy bulbs.