63X Master Fund

63X Master Fund is an investment vehicle of Brazil's richest man, Eike Batista (now ranked eighth richest billionaire in the world by Forbes magazine), through Batista's EBX Group.

He has a controlling 20% shareholding in Vancouver-based Ventana Gold, operator of the La Bodega gold project in Colombia, which claims the potential to dig out a third of a million ounces of the yellow stuff each year [MJ 19 November 2010].

In November 2010, Batista announced that he would make an all-cash US1. 5 billion offer for the remaining 80% in Ventana (which he can certainly afford, and which the Vancouver-based miner looked likely to accept) [MJ 19 November 2010].

Batista made his first $5 million in Brazil's gold fields by the time he was 23; between 1986 and 2001 he was the chairman of TVX Gold. Sale of a stake in MMX Mineracoa de Metalicos to Anglo American earned him a cash and paper gain of more than $1 billion [Mineweb, 8 October 2009; See also: Lumina Capital).

In 2011, MMX was still going strong: it announced future expenditure of US$2.9 billion on its iron ore mines in Brazil's Sudesta System; and it had hired a syndiate of banks (unnamed) to secure around US$800 of this amount. The company would also "approach the likes of the Brazilian Development Bank and export credit agencies" for further funding [MJ 15 July 2011].

According to a Financial Times' blog, EBX is a "mining, gas, and logistics group...which is [also] partnering with Wuhan Iron and Steel and other Chinese companies" [FT blog 17 November 2010].