#Guggenheim Partners faces allegations of self-dealing @FT

Top executives at Guggenheim Partners carried out a series of deals with companies close to the Wall Street firm’s leadership that have triggered concerns over possible favouritism and self-dealing from its own internal compliance, auditing and investment teams, a Financial Times investigation has found.



The deals saw the $240bn Wall Street asset manager invest at least $1bn of client money in companies where Guggenheim’s top officers and biggest shareholders had personal ties, transactions that were in some cases red flagged by the firm’s own compliance department for a lack of due diligence.



The investments have prompted inquiries by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which received a whistleblower complaint in February 2016 alleging Guggenheim’s business culture encouraged senior executives to put themselves ahead of clients and prompted compliance to look the other way or face retaliation, according to people briefed about the complaint’s contents. 



Guggenheim faces allegations of self-dealing

Stel­lar smashups are the source of #gold, #plat­inum, #uranium & other heavy el­e­ments found through-out the uni­verse

Quite incredible.  Now the question is, how do they go from there to depositing themselves throughout the earth in different geologic conditions and settings?

Can someone explain?

"As­tronomers scan­ning rip­ples in space-time have de­tected the col­lision of two neu­tron stars for the first time—and, by an­a­lyz­ing the flare from the cat­a­clysmic crush, dis­cov­ered such stel­lar smashups are the source of gold, plat­inum, uranium and other heavy el­e­ments found through-out the uni­verse."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-clash-of-neutron-stars-forges-gold-1508162400

#Argentina pushes #lithium #mining investments as it aims to produce half the world’s lithium by 2020

http://www.latinfinance.com/Article/3747286/Argentina-pushes-lithium-mining-investments.html?ArticleId=3747286#/.Wax-99GxXmq

Argentina pushes lithium mining investments

Sep 1, 2017

The world's lightest metal is likely to be in great demand in the near future. As it aims to supply half of global lithium demand, Argentina is courting junior miners and global investors

Mick Bowen

Keywords: argentina lithium macri

As the world's electric car manufacturers and renewable energy firms invest heavily in battery development and manufacturing facilities, Argentina has emerged as an important future source of a crucial ingredient, lithium. With several projects set to begin construction, Argentina's Ministry of Energy and Mining expects the country to produce half the world's lithium by 2020.

South America's "lithium triangle," which straddles northwest Argentina, north Chile and southwest Bolivia, contains more than half of the world's identified lithium deposits, mostly in high-altitude salt flats called salares. But while Bolivia has committed to maintaining government control and Chile has opted for a quota system and public-private partnerships, Argentina has opened up its deposits to foreign junior mining companies (small cap mining exploration companies) with an appetite for risk.

Pointing to the "numerous interesting prospects" currently under development by mining exploration companies, Gabriel Rubacha, president of South American operations for Lithium Americas, notes: "Brine projects can be expensive to set up but have very attractive operational costs." In contrast to hard-rock lithium projects, common in North America and Australia, lithium brine is a liquid that can be pumped up, much like oil or water. 

Lithium Americas, through a joint venture with Chilean lithium miner Sociedad Química y Minera (SQM), is developing the Cauchari-Olaroz brine deposit in northern Argentina. The estimated project costs for the lithium carbonate mine are $425 million, but the operating costs are expected to be $2,495 per ton, compared with the $4,000 per ton operating costs typical of hard rock lithium projects. In late 2016, SQM signed lithium carbonate contracts at a price of $12,000 per ton.

Three other projects, owned by Canadian, Australian and French companies, aim to add nearly 100,000 tons to Argentina's production levels within three years, and Australia's Orocobre plans to double capacity at its existing 17,500-ton Salar de Olaroz facility. Those projects alone would boost production in Argentina to 165,000 tons from 29,000 tons in 2016.

But more junior miners are also looking to stake ground in Argentina, encouraged in part by the policies of President Mauricio Macri. "Argentina is recovering the confidence it had lost under the previous administration," says Mario Capello, the undersecretary of mining development. "Much of the focus has been on lithium, and it is the government's duty to develop the potential of these resources."

Light at the end of the tunnel

As Capello explains, more than 30 companies have undertaken lithium exploration projects in the past year, investing over $200 million so far. With research firms predicting that global lithium demand could triple to 750,000 tons annually by 2025, the more advanced projects could benefit from being early movers.

But they could face challenges to access financing. Until now, lithium developers have tended to partner with strategic investors higher up the value chain. For example, in January 2017, Lithium Americas, which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, sold a 19.9% stake to China's Ganfeng Lithium for 64 million Canadian dollars ($48.3 million) and $125 million in debt financing. As part of the deal, Ganfeng's offtake agreement entitles it to 70% of Lithium Americas' share of production from the Cauchari-Olaroz project.

"As a junior company developing a half-a-billion-dollar project, we needed a strong strategic partner that understood the product and the market," says Rubacha. "Both parties agreed to the offtake contract at market prices as the most convenient solution."

Also in January, Lithium Americas sold a 16.4% stake to BCP Innovation, a subsidiary of Thailand's Bangchak Petroleum, for $112 million and another $80 million in financing. BCP's offtake agreement calls for 15% of Lithium Americas' share of production at market prices. 

But would-be lithium miners may soon have to cast a wider net to find financing, according to Chris Berry, founder of the research firm House Mountain Partners. "A small number of development-stage projects looking for major financing will need to rely on more than just strategic investors to attain adequate capital and meet the strong demand forecasts," he says.

Banks and hedge funds have shown interest in funding some projects, but Berry says lithium production involves unique operational risks and lower equity and debt prices could attract varied sources of capital.

Lithium miners in Argentina could also learn lessons from the first lithium boom of 2008 to 2012, when many companies rushed to find financing. Orocobre, for one, became the most shorted stock on the Australian Stock Exchange after it admitted that a "spreadsheet error" had overestimated the concentration of brine at its Olaroz project. Galaxy Minerals, which is also developing a project in Argentina, narrowly escaped bankruptcy after its Chinese processing factory racked up huge losses.

"As much as we'd like to, these projects can't be rushed," Berry says. LF

#Chile’s geography offers an embarrassment of riches for #RenewableEnergy

From today's NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/world/americas/chile-green-energy-geothermal.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur

Chile's Energy Transformation Is Powered by Wind, Sun and Volcanoes

By ERNESTO LONDOÑOAUG. 12, 2017

The first geothermal energy plant in South America is in Cerro Pabellón, Chile, 14,760 feet above sea level, surrounded by volcanoes. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times 

CERRO PABELLÓN, Chile — It looks and functions much like an oil drilling rig. As it happens, several of the men in thick blue overalls and white helmets who operate the hulking machine once made a living pumping crude.

But now they are surrounded by snowcapped volcanoes, laboring to breathe up here at 14,760 feet above sea level as they draw steam from the earth at South America's first geothermal energy plant.

With the ability to power roughly 165,000 homes, the new plant is yet another step in Chile's clean energy transformation. This nation's rapidly expanding clean energy grid, which includes vast solar fields and wind farms, is one of the most ambitious in a region that is decisively moving beyond fossil fuels.

Latin America already has the world's cleanest electricity, having long relied on dams to generate a large share of its energy needs, according to the World Bank.

But even beyond those big hydropower projects, investment in renewable energy in Latin America has increased 11-fold since 2004, nearly double the global rate, according to a 2016 report by the International Renewable Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization. Chile, Mexico and Brazil are now among the top 10 renewable energy markets in the world.

So as Latin America embraces greener energy sources, government officials and industry executives in the region have expressed a sense of confusion, even bewilderment, with the Trump administration's decision to withdraw from the climate change commitments contained in the Paris Agreement, declare an end to the "war on coal" and take aim at American environmental regulations.

"It's irrational, like someone has been asleep for 10 years and refuses to wake up," said James Lee Stancampiano, the head of business development for South America at Enel Green Power, an Italian company that has played a leading role in overhauling Chile's energy sector. "We see renewables as a train that nobody can stop."

A worker inspecting solar panels in the Atacama Desert in Chile, one of the driest and sunniest places on Earth. The sun is so strong there that workers must wear protective suits and slather on thick layers of sunscreen. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times 

Even Argentina, something of a laggard in Latin America when it comes to clean energy, last year invited foreign companies to bid on renewable energy projects and declared 2017 to be the "year of renewables," setting a goal of relying on clean sources for 20 percent of its electricity needs by 2025, up from the current 2 percent.

Mexico is striving to rely on clean energy for 35 percent of its electricity demand by 2024, up from about 21 percent today. By 2050, it hopes to have a grid that runs on at least 50 percent clean energy.

Chilean officials have an even more ambitious projection, saying the country is on track to rely on clean sources for 90 percent of its electricity needs by 2050, up from the current 45 percent.

The country's expanding green energy infrastructure has significantly reduced the cost of producing electricity here, helping to turn a nation once dependent on energy imports into a renewables powerhouse with the potential to help its neighbors keep the lights on.

Wind turbines in the Atacama Desert and other turbines along Chile's 2,653-mile coast contribute power to the national grid. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times 

Part of the reason for the push, said Gabriela Elizondo, a senior energy analyst at the World Bank, is that severe weather events like droughts and floods have made hydropower plants less reliable, leading governments in the region to diversify their power sources.

"This is the main reason nonconventional renewables, meaning wind, solar and geothermal, have started to take off, especially in the last five years," Ms. Elizondo said. "They've taken off in a really spectacular way."

A decade ago, several leaders in the region became concerned that their energy sectors were buckling. After an era of sustained economic growth, during which millions joined the middle class, energy consumption shot up. Few nations were as vulnerable as Chile, which has almost no domestic sources of fossil fuels and was left in a lurch in 2007 when Argentina abruptly cut off natural gas shipments.

"We had a sector with very few actors, little competition and high prices," said Chile's energy minister, Andrés Rebolledo.

Workers watched a soccer game and ate fajitas during their time off at the base camp for the Cerro Pabellón geothermal plant, which has the ability to produce electricity for about 165,000 homes. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times 

The scale of the problem became apparent to President Michelle Bachelet during her first term, which ended in 2010. But it wasn't until she returned to office in 2014 that the government set in motion a plan to embrace renewables and open up the energy market to the private sector.

By then, in addition to the high cost and uncertainty of the energy supply, there was another pressing incentive to change course: Chile was experiencing a prolonged drought that turned once-arable land into desert.

"I am convinced that climate change is a reality, a complete and absolute reality," Ms. Bachelet said in a recent interview. "We think it's essential for our economic development to have cleaner energy because we want this planet to last."

Last August, Chile awarded dozens of contracts to local and foreign companies in a large auction that outsourced about 23 percent of its expected energy needs over the next decade. A new auction is scheduled to take place in November.

Vicuñas and flamingos on the edge of a lake in the Antofagasta Region in northern Chile. The geography of Chile is favorable for the creation of renewable energy. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times 

It doesn't hurt that Chile's geography offers an embarrassment of riches for renewable energy.

A constellation of solar fields built in the Atacama Desert in the north, one of the driest and sunniest places on Earth, has made Chile one of the most promising markets for producers of solar panels. The sun is so strong there that workers at remote solar fields must wear protective suits and obsessively slather on thick layers of sunscreen.

Scores of wind farms in the northern desert and along the country's 2,653-mile coastline are now feeding into the national power grid. And while output from solar and wind sources is irregular, geothermal plants offer round-the-clock power, albeit at a higher cost, making the overall grid less vulnerable to disruptions.

At geothermal plants built in volcanic areas, steam dredged from deep inside the earth is turned into electricity. After passing through a cooling station, the steam is pumped back into the earth using injection wells.

"It's not invasive," said Guido Cappetti, the general manager of the project, a joint venture between Enel and Chile's state-owned National Petroleum Company. "The environmental and social impacts are minimal."

A family in Ollagüe, Chile, watching television and making tea during a recent evening. Sergio Arancibia, a site manager at the Cerro Pabellón geothermal plant, said his job is particularly gratifying because it has brought power to remote, poor population centers. "It guarantees or minimizes the possibility that these small towns will succumb or disappear with time," he said. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times 

Sergio Arancibia, the site manager here at the Cerro Pabellón geothermal plant, said he got his professional start at Venezuela's state oil company. Then he moved to Peru, Argentina and Colombia, always chasing new fossil fuel discoveries that created boomtowns.

While much of the technology from that era is applicable to running the plant at Cerro Pabellón, he said his latest job is particularly gratifying because it has brought power to remote, poor population centers.

"It guarantees or minimizes the possibility that these small towns will succumb or disappear with time," he said. "These indigenous towns that have few revenue sources and jobs, the natural tendency is that they disappear when the last elder dies."

While Latin America's enormous hydropower projects have resulted in calamitous floods, large-scale displacement of local populations and environmental damage, the region's wind, solar and geothermal projects have encountered little resistance from neighboring communities.

Rosmary Mamani, right, and her daughter visiting with neighbors in Ollagüe while standing in front of their home, which has a solar panel on its thatch roof. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times 

Ollagüe, a tiny town along Chile's border with Bolivia, has seen a renewal since residents began getting electricity 24 hours a day last year from a bank of solar panels and wind turbines that charge a large battery.

"This was a town that used to lose power at 1 a.m.," said the mayor, Carlos Reygadas Bavestrello. "It would become a town of darkness. Being able to count on electricity has improved people's quality of life considerably."

Steady electricity has brought about both trivial and profound changes, he said. It's possible to have ice cream now. More significantly, students used to be sent to larger cities to continue their education after eighth grade. But soon, the village will have a high school.

"Our community no longer feels as isolated as it once was," he said. "It's not unusual anymore to see residents from indigenous communities with a laptop and a smartphone in hand connected with the rest of the world."

The Cerro Pabellón geothermal energy plant draws steam from surrounding snowcapped volcanoes, including San Pedro, left, and San Pablo. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

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