Don't get down Funkey1. Here's a good topic to dwell on while waiting.....your dark horse Mick who seems to be wanting to invest in base metals.

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http://www.financialmail.co.za/fmfox/2016/11/03/x2-looks-to-mark-a-different-spot

X2 looks to mark a different spot

Mick Davis. Picture: REUTERS

X2 Resources, the US$6bn mining investment fund launched 3½ years ago by former Xstrata CEO Mick Davis, will seek acquisitions under a different structure after failing to make a single acquisition.

Two of X2’s funders, commodities traders Noble Group and private equity firm TPG, which together contributed $1bn to the fund, withdrew their commitments earlier this year.

Sources close to X2 who declined to be named said executives were talking to the fund’s remaining backers about a more appropriate structure to facilitate decision making.

Some of the difficulties it had experienced in making acquisitions arose because individual backers had different time frames and because attitudes towards commodities had changed. Commodities such as coal have fallen out of favour for environmental reasons.

X2’s remaining funders include Abu Dhabi Investment Council, Canadian pension funds and smaller investors.

Sources say X2 will continue to seek the kind of commodities on which Xstrata was built: energy commodities and base metals.

Since its formation there have been unconfirmed reports that X2 Resources was an unsuccessful bidder for South32, which was spun out of BHP Billiton last year, and for Australian coal mines being sold by Rio Tinto, Anglo American’s niobium and phosphate mines in Brazil as well as various copper mines in Chile.

Xstrata was merged with Glencore in 2012 and Davis, together with several other senior executives, left to form X2 Resources

Davis, a South African, is a former finance director at Eskom and senior executive at Glencore, Ingwe Coal and BHP Billiton.