Mining Ballarat Gold’s chequered past

A corporate collapse and precarious financial prospects form the backdrop to the actual tragic collapse at the Ballarat Gold Mine on Wednesday in Victoria’s central west.

Ownership of the long-established gold miner, which runs Ballarat’s last gold mine, has only just changed hands, after the company’s financial demise early last year under its previous Singaporean ownership.

The timing of what has become the now fatal mine collapse raises myriad questions around responsibility and liability for the disastrous, still unfolding event, with its ownership and control over the past year straddling three parties.

The mine is now owned by a London hedge fund called Acheron Capital, which is run by Singaporean based financial markets guru Jean-Michel Paul. The sole director of the mine’s local vehicle is experienced international mining executive Peter Crooks, who is based out of Perth.

The deal is so fresh that the dotting of Is and crossing of Ts on company paperwork was still being finalised this week. The deed of company arrangement for the new ownership was officially entered into on December 19.

Crooks, as the new owner’s man on the ground in Oz, was contacted by Margin Call for comment on the developing situation at the mine and its financial structure.

Crooks is a former chief operating officer at Centennial Mining. His LinkedIn page as at December last year noted his latest role as “TBA - pending”, with a “new exciting position imminent”.

Following news of the collapse, by early Thursday morning the new owners of the miner had engaged crisis management firm the Civic Partnership to assist it handle the tsunami of media that was covering the event, with representatives dispatched to Ballarat and working from Melbourne as the story continued to unfold.

Acheron had been a lender to the company, which fell into arrears on its payments. Acherson was ultimately one of the parties that called in monies owed to plunge the miner into administration.

Its operations were taken over by corporate undertakers from Hall Chadwick, which has spent the best part of the past year sorting out operations, taking offers from buyers and ultimately accepting a $56m deed of company arrangement from a subsidiary company of Acheron.

The mine is now owned by a company called Victory Minerals Holdings, which is in turn owned by a Singaporean company called Chrysos Investments. Chrysos, via several other entities, ends up at Paul’s Acheron hedge fund.

Before it collapsed, the mine was ultimately owned by another Singaporean listed company Shen Yao Holdings, which had last year put in its own bid with administrators to rescue the group via a deed of company arrangement, which was unsuccessful.

Shen Yao’s ownership of the mine had been fraught. Along with financial struggles, there had also been issues around mining waste disposal and previous interactions with WorkSafe Victoria over safety issues at the mine.