The Luxembourg-based fund will be a long-only, deep-value fund primarily aimed at gold mining, according to a statement by La Mancha Holding.
Sawiris, who chairs La Mancha, said that creating a fund is the natural consequence of the company’s activities since it vended-in its operational assets into Evolution Mining and Endeavour Mining in 2015.
The fund, which will be advised by La Mancha Capital Advisory LLP (LMCA), will include La Mancha’s gold mining assets in both West Africa’s largest producer Endeavour Mining, Evolution Mining, Golden Star, and Altus Strategies. It also includes a $100m investment from “a strategic partner”, which the statement did not name.
“Transitioning to a fund structure and welcoming new investors is timely when we are seeing opportunities in a gold mining sector, which is fragmented and needs further consolidation,” he added.
The fund’s primary investment objective is to provide exposure to the gold and precious metals mining sector, but will also have the flexibility to invest in EV battery metals.
It will invest primarily in a very concentrated portfolio of long-only listed equities but may also consider investing a small proportion of its assets in private equity holdings.
According to the statement, the fund aims to acquire significant stakes in junior mineral resource companies with strong managerial and geological potential, to implement a three-to-five-year value creation strategy.
Furthermore, it will also seek to improve environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics within its portfolio companies during its investment tenure. La Mancha and LMCA believe that profitability and ESG performance are strongly interrelated within the mining sector.
La Mancha Holding is a privately owned, Luxembourg-based investment company 100% listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), which has a market capitalisation of $5.7bn.
It is owned by Egypt’s Sawiris family, which boasts a longstanding history of value creation in telecoms, mining, and real estate.
