People: Spurning AIM

Ivan Murphy, executive director of Düsseldorf-based Tantalus Rare Earths, is looking forward to moving the company, which boasts abundant deposits in Madagascar, to a planned listing in Canada. In by-passing Britain’s AIM market, he would be swelling the ranks of those resource entrepreneurs who believe that Toronto offers higher valuations than its London counterparts.

A partner of natural resources, property and finance-focused Murphy Richards Capital LLP and a founder member of investment bank Fairfax IS, solicitor Murphy is enthusiastic about the company’s Madagascan prospects, where he argues easy extraction will offset low grades. The key is the ‘predominance of heavy rare earths’, which he maintains have significant strategic value, unlike the lighter variety.

‘You can’t build a modern military without heavy rare earths,’ declares Murphy, who points out that the USA is keen to obtain what it can. For that reason, he contends, China, a prime world source that in former times upset world markets by periodically dumping these materials, now jealously guards its supplies and will sell to foreigners only if they agree to set up manufacturing facilities in the People’s Republic itself.

Murphy, who helped found Murphy Richards Capital with corporate financier Andrew Richards, now a fellow Tantalus Rare Earths director, says the company still has £4 million left from an earlier £10.9 million funding on the Frankfurt ‘Open Market’.  He hopes that the Toronto listing will take place in October.