RACHELLE YOUNGLAI
RTGAM



Will the second time be the charm for Yamana Gold Inc.'s attempts to sell its Brazilian assets?

The Toronto-based miner tried to sell some of its Brazilian mines last year, only to yank them from the market when the company could not get the price it was looking for.

Yamana then created a wholly-owned subsidiary with some of those unsold Brazilian mines and asked long-time Canadian miner Gil Clauson and his team to run the unit.

Now, Mr. Clauson is eyeing a multitude of options for the subsidiary, called Brio, including making an acquisition and taking the subsidiary public this year.

"We intend to grow," Mr. Clauson said Tuesday on the sidelines of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention in Toronto.

Mr. Clauson said he did not know whether he would make an acquisition before taking Brio public, but said he was looking for an asset that would produce between 60,000 and 100,000 ounces of gold per year.

He said he would look in Brazil, but not outside the Americas.

"We will stay North-South focused. We don't like looking East-West," he said. "It's much easier to run manage a business North-South than it is East-West."

It is unknown whether there will be investor demand for a new gold company, with the price of bullion down 30 per cent since 2011.

Previously, Mr. Clauson ran copper company Augusta Resource Corp., which was taken over by HudBay Minerals Inc. last year.