World Business Report for Africa Latest Africa Business News Summary:

African Business News at 1815 GMT

Ghanas gold producer Ashanti taken to court.

A court hearing brought by four shareholders in the troubled Ghanaian mining group Ashanti Goldfields, who're seeking the dismissal of the company's directors, will resume next week. The four, who hold four-point-two percent of Africa's third largest gold producer, want an extraordinary meeting to be held to elect a new board and to obtain authority to sell Ashanti's mining assets. The minority shareholders have asked the court for more time to prepare their case. Ashanti has said it will strongly defend the case.

Link

-- TM (mercier7@pdnt.com), January 18, 2000

Answers

Here's a related story:(found at same link to story above)

New hand at the mining helm in Accra

The government has named John Abu as the new Minister of Mines and Energy, a post that has remained vacant since October when Fred Ohene- Kena was sacked for expressing support for Lonmin's bid for Ashanti. And history may well be priming itself for a repeat - Ashanti is being taken to court by shareholders angry at the company's decision to sell half of its valuable Geita property in Tanzania. This is recognised as Ashanti's prime asset -- with the potential to produce 400-500,000 oz of gold a year at relatively low cost...HEAR AN INTERVIEW WITH KWEKU AWOTI, MD OF ASHANTI'S STRATEGIC PLANNING DIVISION AND ANALYSIS FROM CHARLES KERNOT AT PARIBAS IN LONDON IN THE 1815 EDITION. 11/1/2000

-- TM (mercier7@pdnt.com), January 18, 2000.

TM, if you have been following the gold manipulation issue, you would know that the Ashanti lawsuit is about this company selling a very large share of it's pre-mined gold into the futures market, jeopardizing the future of the company when the price of gold increased last Sept.

It was and is foolish and these stockholders want blood and letters of resignation. I don't blame them.

-- OR (orwelliator@biosys.net), January 18, 2000.