Highland Gold set for £200m listing

Lord Daresbury, a member of the Greenall brewing dynasty that became the De Vere hotel group, yesterday revealed plans to float a Russian gold mining company on the AIM exchange.

The AIM listing will help Highland raise up to £25m to expand its existing mine and get the next four producing gold by 2004. Its sites have the potential to produce 8 million ounces of gold. The estimated value of the company would be £200m, making it one of the largest companies on the AIM exchange.

Lord Daresbury, who is the chairman of Aintree racecourse as well as the De Vere group, is executive chairman of Highland Gold Mining, a Jersey-registered company set up in May this year. It owns Russia's fourth-largest producing gold mine and has four more mines in the far east of Russia ready for development.

The South African mining giant Harmony Gold Mining is a major shareholder in the company, with a 32.5 per cent stake and famed for its low-cost mine production around the world. Christopher Palmer-Tomkinson, former partner of Cazenove and uncle to the It-girl Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, will join Ted Grobicki of Harmony on Highland's board as a non-executive director. The former deputy governor of the South African Reserve Bank, James Cross, is also on the board. Management of the company is mainly in Russian hands, where the company has headquarters in Moscow under the stewardship of Ivan Koulakov.

This is Lord Daresbury's first venture in to mining, having until now kept his interests primarily in the leisure and hotel industries and in horse racing. He has been brought in as a boardroom heavyweight to get the company up and running so that it can carry out its expansion plans.

"We believe the management of this company has the necessary disciplines to attract AIM investors. We have a very experienced team of geologists and engineers working out in Russia, and we're very excited about the combination with Harmony," Lord Daresbury said.

The listing will take place on 18 December. Lord Daresbury said he chose the AIM exchange because it had proved successful for a number of similar mining companies and would provide good visibility for the company. The City banking firm, Fleming Family & Partners – the breakaway arm of Robert Fleming, set up by Roddy Fleming when the firm was sold to JP Morgan – is acting as corporate financiers to the listing.