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MINING | Memery Crystal
On day one of the 2019 Investing in African Mining Indaba, RGN attended a seminar titled Listing in London, which was delivered by Tom Attenborough from the London Stock Exchange, Richard Greenfield of Tamesis Partners LLP and Memery Crystal’s head of corporate Michael Dawes. Memery Crystal is a London-based firm with an international focus, and is one of the UK’s leading law firms for advising on equity capital markets transactions for natural resources companies. Memery Crystal’s 20-strong natural resources team has been through several industry downturns and upturns over the last three decades and is therefore well primed to help companies list in the UK markets. Following the 2019 Mining Indaba, RGN’s editor interviewed Dawes to find out more about the firm’s work, particularly in the mining arena.
mining and oil & gas sectors. We do a bit of
Jacob Ambrose Willson: Michael, tell me
I think we did the second ever AIM listing
how Memery Crystal’s natural resources
and because we were involved right from
team works with businesses in the oil
the start, we naturally attracted a lot of
& gas, mining and renewable energy
technology companies and a lot of mining
markets?
and oil & gas companies.
Michael Dawes: We work mainly in the
Having done a lot of those transactions
renewables but our focus is predominantly on mining and oil & gas and if you look back over 10 years its been an equal split between each, depending on cycles. We get introduced to companies from these sectors by some of the small-cap banks here, by people like Tom Attenborough from the LSE, by people we know and have done deals with before, and we help them access capital in the UK. That is the high level description of what we do. We help them list in the UK and we help them with fundraising in the UK - we introduce them to the right team of brokers, accountants, PR, etc. and so we help them access the UK’s capital markets to fund their projects. JAW: Homing in on the mining sector – How has Memery Crystal built its reputation for assisting mining companies to list and raise funds in London? MD: I think you have to look back right to the start of AIM. When AIM was conceived as a growth market many years ago, it was particularly attractive to technology companies and natural resources companies.