Field of dreams
Fresh from its success with Hunnu Coal in Mongolia, The Note would not have been surprised to see Garrison Capital making a return to exotic locations with its latest play, Highfield Resources.
Advised by Garrison and with CPS Securities as lead manager, Highfield is raising $4 million ahead of its planned mid-January listing.
The company’s focus is on potash, an agricultural input which attracted a lot of attention with BHP Billiton’s failed $40 billion takeover of Canada’s intriguingly named Potash Corporation.
Others in the potash business include Sirius Minerals, a London company with a UK deposit which has attracted former Fortescue Metals Group executives Chris Catlow and Russell Scrimshaw to its board.
Indulging ourselves in the mysteries of a junior hopeful’s prospectus is one of The Note’s great pleasures and, on this occasion, we were struck by the document’s imagery of peasantry in the paddy fields.
Where, oh where, could this be? Vietnam? Bangladesh? Sri Lanka?
Immersed in thoughts of far away lands, we were a little disappointed to discover a little deeper in the prospectus’ pages that Highfield’s target area is the Canning Basin in WA’s north – at which point we started to wonder if the pictures might not be the rice terraces of Bali, where half of Perth’s corporate set are likely to be this holiday season while the Aussie dollar remains high.
Honey bear
Finally, a brief Christmas story to signal the end of 2012 and the festive season. The Note was taken aback by an alarming missive from University of Western Australia headlined “2012 Christmas hams to be affected by honey slump?”
As an aficionado of this cured meat delicacy, we dived straight in looking for the details.
Thankfully, the rest of the document highlighting QEII Fellow Associate Professor Boris Baer’s concerns about drought-affected bees failed to return to the subject of the threat to traditional ham manufacturing, honey glazed or not.