Financing Mining Ventures

This paper will not tell you how or where to borrow money. It deals with the steps required for the analysis and documentation of financing transactions (borrowings) in mining transactions. It contains a checklist applicable to those transactions so that appropriate legal documentation, including opinion letters, may be prepared. It will assist in finding legal issues, but will not analyze those issues. Such an analysis for all law touched by a typical mining transaction is beyond the existing knowledge of most practitioners and, certainly, the author.

The diagrams chosen for illustration represent actual financing transactions. Some of the transactions involve arrangements that presented undesirable or uncertain legal consequences. Not all diagrammed transactions were completed. The names have, of course, been changed.