With equity finance for the mineral exploration sector being extraordinarily tight On-Market Bookbuilds has developed a new capital raising tool in partnership with the Australian Securities Exchange, called ASX BookBuild. The facility should improve the transparency of most kinds of capital raisings, including placements and IPOs.

Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC) chief executive Simon Bennison says, “Hopefully this will encourage investors to become more engaged in capital raising activities, as they will now be able to participate in all capital raisings that use the ASX BookBuild Facility.

“The ASX Bookbuild Facility provides mineral exploration and mining companies more control over the pricing and allocation of their capital raising. Importantly it will allow companies access to all of market demand when conducting a capital raising.

“Given the decreasing number of IPOs and average amount raised for metals and mining companies, this is a timely and useful facility for the industry. We look forward to this being road-tested to assess the benefits to mineral exploration and mining companies,” says Simon Bennison.

ASX BookBuild is a venture between the Australian Stock Exchange and On-Market BookBuilds, a private company that has been working on the tool for more than four years. The ASX BookBuild Facility will be available for companies to use from October 8, 2013.
www.amec.org.au