The Group's objective is to make investments in the natural resource sector and the Board sees this as having considerable growth potential in the foreseeable future. Historically, investments are made immediately prior to initial public offerings, at the IPO stage and in the aftermarket of companies quoted on AIM and on other internationally recognised exchanges. Initial investments are for varying amounts but are usually in the £30,000 - £250,000 range but in any case limited in value to a maximum of 20% of the Company's net equity funds in any one target. Investments will be made in both large cap resource stocks generating dividends as well as in smaller companies, which may not be generating cash flow and often have further requirements to raise additional cash to continue their exploration and development programmes. Therefore, after appropriate due diligence, the Company may provide further funding and make follow-up market purchases to support investments it may have made in the past.
The business is inherently high risk and of a cyclical nature dependent upon fluctuations in world economic activity, which impacts on the demand for minerals and oil and gas. Investments held by the Company sometime may lack share market liquidity even if they are quoted on recognised markets.
Furthermore, during the exploration and development stages of a company, it may sometimes be difficult to fully realise an investment at its quoted market price. However, exploration companies seek to find large economically exploitable resources and if successful may attract third party bids, or otherwise become much larger entities and show greater liquidity in their shares.
Accordingly, the Board is unable to give any estimate of the quantum or timing of returns. The Company does not use any external borrowings for the purpose of making investments.
The Group has formulated a two-fold investment policy:
The Board of Tiger, based on the direct experience of its management, is of the opinion that excellent shareholder value can be released during the formative stages of resource companies, particularly during the early exploration and development stages of natural resource projects.
Consequently, in order to allow Tiger to participate in this early stage value creation process, the Board has extended the Company's scope of its investment policy so that, in addition to making passive investments in the resource sector, the Company is also able to play a pro-active role in incubating and structuring investee companies.
The proactive investment policy, approved by shareholders at the Company's 2012 AGM is being implemented in two ways.
Firstly, through the incubation and seed-financing of new subsidiary companies ("New-Cos") which will initially either remain in the private domain or be admitted on the NEX Exchange. The Board will then target suitable assets or projects across the commodity spectrum from precious and base metals to oil and gas opportunities with the intention of these being acquired by New-Cos. It is expected that additional financing will be raised and that the relevant New-Cos will be admitted to the AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange ("AIM") at this second stage of the process. Tiger Board members will play an influential role in initially structuring and managing these newly formed resource companies and additional directors and officers will be appointed to the relevant New-Cos as the need arises.
Secondly, as a result of difficult market conditions, in the junior resource sector, some companies with good assets are finding themselves short of cash as traditional financing methods are much harder to access or in some cases are not available. These poor market conditions result in the share price of such companies falling to historic lows. In order to create value for the Company's shareholders, Tiger will aim to make investments in such quoted vehicles ("New-Co2"), through a private placement of shares. The goal under this option is to divest and/or re-organise New-Co2's existing assets as necessary as well as target suitable new assets matched with additional financing in order to create shareholder value.
The proactive style of investment articulated above will involve the Group's officers taking executive roles in investee companies and it is proposed that suitable market based remuneration and long term incentive schemes, linked to success, will be made available to the relevant Tiger directors who take on these roles.
A long term incentive scheme will also be awarded to Directors of the Group for successfully implementing the above strategy. Individual Directors of the Group may also co-invest with the Group, in certain circumstances, to support investments made by Tiger, although this will be subject to receiving the Board's consent. The Board is aware that the above circumstances may at times result in conflict of interest and will continuously assess and review current and future investments to ensure that potential conflicts are identified and managed and that Tiger's interests are not compromised in the execution of the Group's proactive investment strategy.