Mar 15, 2017 | Australian Financial Review
Mark Creasy shows little sign of giving up his endless search for the next big mining deal.
The BRW Rich Lister is a prolific investor in small cap mining stocks, holding shares in dozens of ASX-listed junior explorers with varying degrees of success over the years.
Creasy spreads the net wide, but when he finds success it usually brings a big payday, such as when he reaped more than $500 million when Independence Group acquired Sirius Resources, in which Creasy held a big chunk of stock, in 2014.
Several of his holdings have surged in value in the past 12 months and Creasy’s collection of companies, in which he shows up among the top 20 shareholders, is approaching $500 million.
Creasy has shares in Lion One Metals, a Canadian development and exploration company with a focus on its 100 per cent-owned Tuvatu Gold Project in Fiji.
The Fijian government gave the project a “green light” in late 2015 and Lion One shares on the ASX have performed well since. The stock is up almost 140 per cent in the past year.
Two other stocks in Creasy’s portfolio to have doubled in value in 12 months are Millenium Metals, which is up about 105 per cent, and the smaller Coziron Resources.
Millenium Metals is a Perth scrap metal company. Coziron owns 85 per cent of three iron ore projects in Western Australia, while Creasy himself owns the remaining 15 per cent.
Minerals making money
Creasy also holds shares in gold explorer Gascoyne Resources, which is up 63¢ in 12 months, and uranium explorer Energy Metails, which has risen 80 per cent in the same time.
His next big play though is the private company White Rivers Exploration, founded and 63 per cent-owned by Creasy.
In September, White Rivers discovered a major gold project in South Africa, and announced plans to capitalise on the discovery with a joint listing in London and Johannesburg sometime this year.
The project is one of the biggest to be defined in recent times, and is expected to produce 250,000 to 300,000 ounces a year for more than 30 years.
Creasy’s private investment vehicle, Yandal Investments, also has about $321 million retained earnings on its balance sheet.
Creasy arrived in Australia in 1964, after graduating from the British Royal School of Mines, taking a job in a Queensland coal mine. He eventually struck it rich with the sale of two gold deposits to Joseph Gutnick’s Great Central Mines for $130 million in 1994.
Since then he has steadily built his wide portfolio, and seemingly will never stop doing what he loves best: getting out there and trying to strike gold or another metal.
