A friend just sent this - re Eike and Colombia:

Bloomberg

Batista Plans IPO of Colombia Gold Unit, Abandons EBX Sale

March 14, 2011, 5:15 PM EDT

By Juan Pablo Spinetto and Fabiola Moura

March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista plans an initial public offering of a gold mining unit in Colombia that he says is worth at least three times more than the company’s current value.

Batista, Brazil’s richest person, will list his gold company AUX in Bogota, London and Sao Paulo in the next year, in addition to the planned IPO of a Colombian coal-mining business, he said today in an interview at Bloomberg News headquarters in New York. EBX Group Ltd., which controls Batista’s publicly traded companies and he proposed selling last year, is “never going public,” Batista said.

Batista will invest about $100 million in Ventana Gold Corp. and may consider buying more assets before selling shares in the company. Ventana, based in Vancouver with assets in Colombia, is worth at least $4.5 billion compared with the valuation of C$1.54 billion ($1.58 billion) based on Batista’s unsolicited offer, Batista said.

“The reason why we bought Ventana is that I see that the assets are three times bigger than what people who owned it thought it was,” Batista said.

Batista, who bought his first gold mine at age 24, controls 91 percent of Ventana as of March 3 after winning an unsolicited offer for the company. He also plans to raise as much as $1.5 billion in an initial sale of CCX, as the Colombian coal unit is known.

Two Companies

“Now I have two new companies that are going to go public in a year from now,” he said.

Batista said he also aims to list all five of his Sao Paulo-traded companies in London to help lure more international investors.

Shares of Batista’s MMX Mineracao e Metalicos SA rose 3.9 percent today to 9.6 reais and are down 14.5 percent this year. OSX Brasil SA jumped 4.2 percent to 524 reais and is up 8.5 percent this year.

OGX Petroleo e Gas Participacoes SA advanced 0.9 percent to 19.05 reais and have dropped 4.8 percent this year. LLX Logistica SA climbed 3.8 percent to 4.61 reais and lost 2.5 percent this year. MPX Energia SA gained almost 2 percent to 37.20 reais and is up 41.2 percent this year.

The benchmark Bovespa index is down 3 percent so far this year.

--With assistance from Margaret Brennan in New York. Editors: Laura Zelenko.

To contact the reporter on this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto in Rio de Janeiro at [email protected] Fabiola Moura in New York at [email protected];

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at [email protected]

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-14/batista-plans-ipo-of-colombia-gold-unit-abandons-ebx-sale.html

El d