Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim’s Minera Frisco SAB agreed Wedesday to acquire gold mines in Mexico from AuRico Gold Inc. for $750 million.
One of these days one of the world’s billionaires is going to decide to put three quarters of a billion dollars into silver and it will be all over for the cartel’s silver manipulation.
Billionaire Carlos Slim’s Minera Frisco SAB agreed to acquire mining assets in Mexico from AuRico Gold Inc. (AUQ) for $750 million in what would be the largest gold deal involving a Mexican company.
AuRico will sell properties including the Ocampo mine and Venus and Los Jarros projects in northern Chihuahua state and a 50 percent stake in the Orion project in Nayarit state, the companies said yesterday in separate statements.
Slim, the world’s richest person according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is betting precious metals will show resilience as the global economy struggles to grow. The price of gold, which is poised to rise for the 12th straight year, hasn’t dropped below $1,500 an ounce in more than a year.
The deal is reportedly the largest ever involving a Mexican gold company:
The proposed sale would be the largest gold deal involving a Mexican company, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Globally, there have been 19 gold-mining deals bigger than $100 million announced this year, valued at $6.49 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with 18 transactions worth $14.4 billion announced in the same period of 2011.
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If nothing else, this is good publicity for gold bugs.
Eventually the lawes of supply and demand will win-out and we will see the same thing happen with SILVER. The big money is headed are way. Hang in there…The cartel will eventually fail as well.
Don’t forget about the Hunt Brothers when they tried to use their wealth to buy silver. They became from billionaire to middle classes. The cartel were able to take down billionaires who are known as the Hunt Brothers in 1980.
The question is, how many of the world’s billionaires hold their ‘wealth’ in real physical assets vs paper financial ‘assets’ that depend on ‘confidence’ to be of any value? Judging by the current prices of silver and gold, likely not even a single one. The world’s billionaires would do well in following in the footsteps of the Texas Hunt Brothers in regards to protecting their wealth by converting their financial assets denominated in fiat paper currencies (virtual wealth) into pure physical silver (real wealth), but most are players within the financial system con-game, and would rather not rock the boat, lest they suffer the fate of the Hunt Brothers at the hands of ‘Big Brother’.
And so the role of the ‘Hunt Brothers’ is bestowed upon the few men and women throughout the world who continue to do what even the world’s billionaires are afraid to do, namely, give fiat paper ‘money’ a vote of no-confidence by converting their hard-earned paper ‘money’ into the money of the ancients–silver and gold, and thus transform their ‘slave’ labor (working for fiat ‘money’) into real labor of substance and of value (working for silver and gold).
There are already quite a few mainstream billionaires and near-billionaires investing heavily in gold (Eric Sprott, Frank Giustra, Bill Gross, Doug Casey, Ray Dalio, David Einhorn-just to name a few).
This positive trend can only continue and accelerate in the near future, although I think the big moves in gold will occur when the multitudes of millionaires start getting into gold (there are a lot more millionaires than billionaires).
@Plebian Don’t forget that there are also a few boys and girls like me who are also converting their fiat currencies into gold and silver. I only know one person of my age which is one of my friends who knows the fundamentals of gold and silver and he recently told me that he’s going to buy his first silver soon.
Carlos Slim is no friend to precious metals. His empire is based on paper – stocks. He has every incentive to maintain the status quo. I have no idea what are his intentions with this purchase but I am wary.
When did stock ownership and PM ownership become mutually exclusive? I didn’t get that memo.
Secondly, if it weren’t for stock investors we’d have no PMs to invest in. Who do you think funds the mines that mine our gold/silver?
Exactly! Slim went heavily SHORT silver@$49 to FINANCE the development of his silver mine. Going over AuRicos financials, it looks as if Slim made a low ball offer based on AuRicos NPV and projected cash flows.
@bruinjoe: When one is as wealthy as Carlos Slim it’s impossible to buy the amount of gold he has bought via ownership to mining interests without sending the price of physical blasting higher — and maybe, he might not even be able to buy as much as he’d like to at all. Certainly, he can get gold in the ground via a mine at a lower cost than buying gold out of the COMEX or LME, so his purchase makes investment sense on that score too.
Eric Sprott sends silver up every time PSLV makes an offering and there’s no way Sprott could put 100% of his wealth into physical metals right now even if he wanted to because there’s not enough metal out there. No harm, however, because Sprott, myself, THORISHERE and many others know that there are strategies for mining stock accumulation that are indeed wise (in terms of all the risk factors governing selection) and supportive to the industry.
FACT: Over the last five years, we’ve seen a general trend of investor monies flowing incrementally more so into bullion ETFs and less interest in mining companies, which has hurt the entire precious metals sector overall because the capital formation cycle has been distorted, which in turn has hurt the reinvestment process one typically sees as mining share investors haven’t had their fair share of associated profits to reinvest back into the sector, purchases which would have included purchases of bullion as well, lifting up your holdings. The lagging performance of mining shares has also played a big role in tarnishing sentiment for the entire sector, which has played a big roll in keeping bullion prices below where they should be — once again, directly impacting the value of your holdings.
I can’t speak to the character of Carlos Slim. I haven’t studied him much. But I can say with absolute certainty that a dogmatic position against precious metals investors deploying capital in mines is not productive. There is a preference among most on SD to stick to physical and that’s perfectly fine. In fact, for most people that have a net worth of US$100,000 or less, that’s a perfectly rational and wise strategy. But when one starts having to deal with larger sums of money, diversification becomes more important.
I don’t think that one of these billionaires is going to put three quarters of his billion dollars on silver because we all know what happened the last time when a billionaire put his dollars on silver. Also, that billionaire is now in control of these mines so he manipulate gold’s price a little bit more.