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Entrepreneur Rob Still’s Pangea DiamondFields has emerged with 40 per cent of Alan Bond’s Lesotho Diamond Corporation (LDC).

According to South African mining man Still, a group of founding shareholders of LDC offered AIM-quoted Pangea their combined stakes in the company, which owns 93 per cent of Lesotho’s potentially rich Kao diamond pipe — even though LDC’s chairman Morven Hay suggested yesterday an unnamed Middle East backer was willing to invest up to �41 million in the company. Pangea has received ‘irrevocable acceptances’ from the 40 per cent for its offer, worth 8p cash per share plus Pangea warrants taking the total value to 24.5p.

‘We don't intend to stay at that level,’ insists Still, who has been in touch with Alan Bond, the controversial Aussie tycoon of yesteryear whose family interests hold 38 per cent of LDC and who has been grooming it for a float. Still says Kao, with an estimated 10.2 million carats and a claimed net present value of �129 million, could prove ‘one of the very few economic kimberlite pipes in the world’, though he sounds sceptical about claims from the LDC camp that it could be worth billions.

Pangea’s 24.5p offer is less than the 33p which another AIM concern, River Diamonds, has paid at a cost of �2.2 million for a 4 per cent stake and would pay to exercise warrants in LDC for a larger holding. Still says the 8p cash is an ‘insurance policy’ until exploration and scientific evaluation prove whether or not Kao lives up to expectations.

If Kao does come up trumps, he argues, then the warrant element in new Pangea shares would rise, reflecting its 40 per cent control, and so Pangea’s offer would not be worth less and might be worth much more than what River Diamonds and others have paid. Pangea, at 61p could prove a lively market.