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African Rainbow Sets Float at 40% as Gold Fever Grows (Update1)
By Antony Sguazzin


Johannesburg, April 29 (Bloomberg) -- African Rainbow Minerals & Exploration Ltd. said it will sell 40 percent of its gold unit to investors next month as rising bullion prices stoke interest in South Africa's top black-owned miner.

``The free-float will be 40 percent,'' Pieter Taljaard, the company's finance director, said in a phone interview from San Diego, where he is pitching the initial public offering to investors. The promotional tour ``has been a fruitful and profitable exercise.''

African Rainbow is looking to raise $120 million from the Johannesburg share sale, Taljaard said. That's more than the 1 billon rand ($94 million) that a banker earlier said the company targeted.

The 11-member Johannesburg All-Gold Index has almost tripled in value over the past year as metal prices climbed 18 percent and the rand dropped 24 percent, lowering miners' costs. That's increased the allure of African Rainbow, which controls $2.4 billion worth of gold reserves at current prices. South Africa plans new laws that would favor black mining companies.

Order-taking started today and will run until May 6, with trading expected to begin in Johannesburg on May 15, a banker has said. South Africa's BoE Merchant Bank and Royal Bank of Canada Europe Ltd. are managing the share sale.

The gold unit, to be named African Rainbow Minerals Gold Ltd. after the sale, is the country's fifth-biggest gold producer. It mines about 1 million ounces a year, worth more than $300 million, half of that through a joint venture with No. 3 Harmony Gold Mining Co.

African Rainbow plans to use money raised in the market to repay 300 million rand in debt and fund expansion, its preliminary prospectus said. The company posted a profit of 184 million rand in 2001. The joint venture with Harmony became operational this year

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