Velpic secures $3.9m for backdoor listing

A local exploration company led by Perth Glory owner Tony Sage is looking to join the wave of backdoor listings and become a gambling platforms provider, while technology company Velpic’s reverse takeover of International Coal has reached another milestone.

Fe Limited, which has several iron ore, gold and nickel exploration tenements in Western Australia and Queensland, has proposed to acquire Cardinal House Group and adopt its business model for about $5.4 million.

Cardinal House is working to become a business-to-business and business-to-consumer provider of online social gaming products and real money gambling platforms.

It has applied for an Australian gaming licence and is negotiating access to online gaming platform technology, and is also in negotiations with south-east Asian groups to grow the business internationally.

Under the terms of the deal, Fe will issue Cardinal a maximum of 300 million shares, which at the company’s last share price of 1.8 cents is valued at $5.4 million.

Fe will be required to complete a minimum $1.7 million capital raising in order to comply with ASX re-listing rules.

The deal is also dependent on Cardinal House being granted a gaming licence from the Department of Gaming of Norfolk Island.

Fe plans to change its name to Cardinal House Group when it re-lists.

“Should the transaction proceed, Fe proposes to seek to divest of its existing mining exploration business,” the company said in a statement.

“Fe has not yet identified any potential buyers for its existing assets.”

If the deal is successful, it is anticipated that Fe director Paul Kelly will resign from the board while existing directors will move into non-executive roles.

Two Cardinal House nominees, likely to be Graham Martin and Paul Carroll, will join the board.

Mr Martin was chairman of Probability Games Corporation, which listed on the London AIM in 2006.

Fe expects to begin trading under its new name and business model in January.

Meanwhile, International Coal reached a milestone in its proposed acquisition of Velpic today, announcing that it had received commitments of over $3.9 million as part of a capital raising to complete the reverse takeover.

The company was seeking a minimum $3 million from the raising.

The raising was supported by Tony Gandel, the son of billionaire property developer John Gandel.

The Gandel family owns the Chadstone Shopping Centre in Melbourne.

The Velpic group, led by entrepreneur and internet pioneer Russell Francis, consists of a cloud-based video e-learning platform, branded as Velpic, and a brand technology agency called Dash Digital.

The takeover involves the issue of 250 million shares at 2 cents each and a cash payment of $200,000, valuing the deal at $5.2 million.

International Coal is on-track to re-list on the ASX as Velpic by the end of October.

Continuing the trend in backdoor listings, Monto Minerals announced today that it has exercised its right to acquire user-generated content (UGC) marketing platform company ShareRoot, in a deal worth $10 million.

Monto has made a final payment to ShareRoot to exercise its right to acquire the business and should be re-listing on the ASX in November.

“Monto is preparing a notice of meeting for its shareholders to consider the acquisition of ShareRoot, approval for a capital raising and appointment of directors which is all part of the change in Monto’s activities from a mineral exploration company to a UGC marketing company,” the company said in a statement.

Monto shares were 100 per cent, or 0.1 cents, higher to 0.2 cents each at 11:20am.

International Coal and Fe shares are currently in a trading halt.