The proposed Australian Stock Exchange floats of Talisman Mining and Merlin Petroleum have stalled for a lack of investor interest.
The proposed Australian Stock Exchange floats of Talisman Mining and Merlin Petroleum have stalled for a lack of investor interest.
Talisman was seeking to raise $3.5 million to fund its base metal exploration activities.
The company’s managing director, Steven Elliott, attributed the lack of investor interest to bad timing of the prospectus launch, a lack of support from the brokerage community, and the lack of any big names on Talisman’s board.
Talisman’s prospectus hit the streets about the time the Chinese Government said it was going to slow down the Chinese economy.
The company was being backed by Sydney-based brokerage Cameron Stockbrokers.
Mr Elliott said Cameron had done its best but the brokerage support hadn’t been there because “we didn’t have the names on the board”.
Besides Mr Elliott, the other members are Anthony Kiernan (non-executive chairman), Ste-phen Denn (executive director), Ian Macpherson (non-executive director) and Lloyd Flint as company secretary.
He said the company was now looking at merger opportunities and had several other companies in mind.
Merlin Petroleum’s managing director, John Heugh, also blamed his company’s float woes on bad timing.
The company was aiming to raise $15 million in a dual ASX and London Stock Exchange Alternative Investment Market listing, to support its oil explora-tion activities, predominantly in the Cooper Basin. It aimed to gain two thirds of its capital from the UK.
Mr Heugh said the company had gone to the UK in August, which had proved to be a very bad time with much of the major investment community players away on holidays.
“August in the UK is very similar to January over here,” he said.
The company’s circumstances also changed since the company’s prospectus was released.
Mr Heugh said Merlin executed a farm-in agreement with White-sands Petroleum on August 31.
He said the farm-in had been something the company had been hoping to have cleared up before its prospectus was released.
“We also had some difficulties extending the original deal we had with Victoria Petroleum and Permian Petroleum, a subsidiary of Roma Petroleum,” Mr Heugh said. “We weren’t able to extend the Victoria Petroleum side of the deal in terms the board was happy with.”
Merlin is now considering its options which include a merger, a backdoor listing, or conducting other capital raisings.
“Instead of the original capital being raised from our IPO we’re looking for private funding. That will be done in several tranches,” Mr Heugh said.
