Billionaire Bets on Rare-Earth Metals After Uralkali Exit
By Yuliya Fedorinova & Alex Sazonov - Oct 30, 2013 7:54 AM ET .
Billionaire Alexander Nesis made a fortune from gold, silver and banking. His next target: producing rare-earth metals from material discarded as Russia developed an atomic bomb in the 1940s.
Nesis’s ICT holding company is in a venture with state-owned Rostec to fast-track production of rare-earths, using thorium-bearing concentrate kept stockpiled for more than 60 years. The partners also plan to bid for Tomtor in the Siberian republic of Yakutia, a deposit that has more than 150 million metric tons of ore containing rare-earths and is among the largest in the world, Nesis said in an interview in Moscow.
“Once we have the technology and the best deposit, we will have a competitive position in this segment,” he said. The cost of the project could reach about $1 billion in the next five to six years, helping Russia develop its first production of rare earths, used in items from iPhones to hybrid cars.
Nesis has a net worth of $3.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, including his stake in gold producer Polymetal International Plc and, until July, OAO Uralkali (URKA), the world’s largest potash producer. Nesis, 50, disposed of the last of the 12 percent stake he controlled in Uralkali just days before the Russian company broke up a potash marketing partnership with Belarus, sending stock prices of producers around the world tumbling.
His bet on Uralkali was based on the expectation its combination with rival OAO Silvinit, completed in 2011, would deliver returns, Nesis said. “Once we saw that the value of the merger was realized in the share price, we started to sell.”
more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-29/billionaire-bets-on-rare-earth-metals-after-uralkal-exit.html
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