Lihir Gold Australian operations executive general manager Richard Laufmann has been appointed Indophil Resources managing director.

Richard Laufmann was the former Ballarat Goldfields managing director which was bought out by Lihir Gold.

Indophil managing director and co-founder Tony Robbins retired at the end of May.

Richard Laufmann understands Indophil's major asset, the Tampakan copper-gold deposit in the Philippines, very well as he worked on the project's original studies in the late 1990s when he was with WMC which owned it at the time.

Indophil owns 34% of the Tampakan project and is increasing its shareholding to 37.5%. Xstrata recently exercised its options over the project and took out 62.5%.

The Tampakan project is a 2 billion tonne resource estimated to contain 11.6 million tonnes of copper and 14.6 million ounces of gold.

John Cook joins Axiom board

John Cook has been appointed a non-executive independent director of Axiom and chairman of the company.

John has more than 40 years experience as an institutional and high net worth advisor, specialising in the raising of capital for mining companies and is an authorised representative of Reynolds & Co Stockbrokers, Sydney.

He is chairman of the board of directors of Petaquilla Minerals, which is listed on the Toronto, New York and Frankfurt exchanges. John is also president and director of Petaquilla Copper Limited, which is undergoing an IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange.