Alecto Minerals signs deal to buy AME West Africa

Alecto Minerals has signed an agreement with African Mining & Exploration to acquire its subsidiary AME West Africa.Alecto has secured £600,000 of funding through a £250,000 placing and issue of convertible loan from AME and an Alecto cornerstone investor, Tamimi Investments and Mining Co.AME West Africa owns, through its wholly owned subsidiary Caracal Gold Mali SARL, the Kossanto gold project in south-west Mali which has a Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) inferred resource of 107,000 ounces of gold.AME's in-country exploration team will help advance the project and Alecto intends to appoint Mark Jones, currently Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of AME, as CEO of Alecto upon completion of the acquisition.Consideration for the acquisition was satisfied through the issue of more than 108m Alecto shares priced at 1.15p with an aggregate value of £1.25m. Further deferred payments will be made, dependent on progress on proving up the resources."This is a transformational acquisition for Alecto which delivers new advanced West African gold exploration assets, drilling equipment and management expertise to the company," said Alecto Chairman, Michael Johnson. "Alecto now has an excellent portfolio across three countries and in the coming months will seek to finalise its heads of terms with Centamin plc regarding the Ethiopian gold project, which is progressing well. With this in mind, we look forward to updating shareholders in due course as we successfully build Alecto's profile as a multi-commodity exploration and development company in Africa."Shares rose 2.22% to 1.15p at 10:13 on Thursday.RD