Global Emerging Markets (GEM)

Global Emerging Markets ("GEM") was founded in 1991 and is now a $3.4 billion alternative investment group, "focused on emerging markets across the world".

In 2007, it launched a US$1 billion fund to "target mineral resources in the developing world" - particularly China, SE Asia and Africa. The same year, along with Hong Kong-listed TIHL, GEM invested in a 99.6 million tonne coking coal mine in Inner Mongolia.

In May 2010, GEM provided 725 million Rand (US$98.5 million) to Aurora Empowerment Systems, a South Africa BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) company, under the tutelage of Zondwa Mandela, grandson of the first president of an independent South Africa. Aurora bid for two gold mines, formerly owned by Pamadozi Gold Ltd, which "ran out of funds and went into liquidition" [MJ 7 May 2010].