Cheyne’s walk

Crossing to the other side of the fence can be an instructive experience, as Matt Sutcliffe, astringent former corporate finance director at investment group Evolution found when he became head of junior AIM gold and copper hopeful Alexander Mining. Gerald Cheyne recently made a similar transition, when he left the corporate finance team at broker Keith Bayley Rogers (KBR) to become UK representative for Indonesia-focused Kalimantan Gold.

He says he is not regretting the move. While ex-colleagues at KBR have been sorting out the complex disentangling of former share-swap specialist Resource Investment Trust, he has been able to concentrate on Kalimantan (formerly Borneo), where his company, headed by Irish-Australian Rahman Connelly, is looking at some potentially tasty coal, gold and copper prospects.

Kalimantan has six-month options on five thermal coal projects in East Kalimantan, where Churchill Mining and other companies have been doing well. Drilling is now beginning at one of them, Tarakan, on Mandul Island, boasting six encouraging seams.

Connelly says that Kalimantan Gold, which is seeking to raise £500,000 now and will clearly need to raise much more later on if all goes well, is looking at other ‘very large and very advanced’ projects in the same area and thinking of diversifying into silver.

He expects that the company’s potentially rich epithermal gold and copper projects will eventually overshadow coal but, as Cheyne reminds him, coal is what City fund managers like to hear about just now.