Freehills is acting as Australian legal counsel to Lynas Corporation Limited on its capital raising announced yesterday of up to approximately A$450 million. The capital raising is fully underwritten by J.P. Morgan Australia Limited.
The raising will take place by way of an accelerated non-renounceable, pro-rata entitlement offer to existing institutional and retail shareholders to raise approximately A$295 million. Concurrently with the institutional component of the entitlement offer, Lynas will conduct an unconditional placement to raise approximately A$88 million and a placement that will be conditional on approval by shareholders to raise a further A$67 million.
Lynas owns the richest deposit of Rare Earths in the world at Mt Weld in Western Australia. Rare Earths are used in a variety of environmentally friendly applications from hybrid cars to energy saving light bulbs. Lynas has a strategy to create a reliable, fully integrated source of supply from mine through to customer, and to become the benchmark for security of supply and environmental standards in the global Rare Earths industry.
Proceeds of the capital raising will be used to fund the completion of Phase 1 of the Lynas Rare Earths Project.
The Freehills team is led by partners Tony Sparks and Philippa Stone, and lawyers Ivan Yu, Sally Choi, Steve Drummond and Peter Ward.
Freehills partner Tony Sparks said, ‘This deal required the Lynas, Freehills and J.P.Morgan teams to work incredibly hard on a challenging timetable. It also required ASIC to provide individual relief on a very short timeframe and under a policy that ASIC has only recently adopted.’
Freehills’ award winning equity capital markets team has acted on many of Australia’s largest recent capital raisings, including acting for Elders, Santos and FKP Property Group, and for the underwriters on numerous raisings including those by Virgin Blue, Rio Tinto and Amcor.
Mallesons advised J.P. Morgan.
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