Northwestern Enterprises acquires shares of Rio Novo Gold Inc.

BVI company Northwestern Enterprises Ltd entered into binding agreements with two separate sellers, for the acquisition of ownership of an aggregate of 95,480,414 ordinary shares of Rio Novo Gold Inc., in private transactions at a price of US$0.092 per share. The shares will be purchased on or before August 22, 2016, subject to customary closing conditions. The purchased shares represent approximately 63.03% of the issued and outstanding ordinary shares of the company.

Concurrently with the completion of this transaction, BVI company's owner plans to cause 3,557,000 ordinary shares to be transferred from Sercor Ltd to Northwestern (both companies controlled by the same person). This amount represents approximately 2.35% of the issued and outstanding ordinary shares.

After the acquisition and the transfer, Northwestern Enterprises will hold 99,037,414 ordinary shares representing approximately 65.4% of the issued and outstanding ordinary shares of Rio Novo.

Polo Resources announced new share issue

Polo Resources Limited, the natural resources investment company having interests in oil, coal and metals, has issued 9,832,358 new ordinary shares as consideration for the transaction with Blackham Resources announced in June.

The application has been made for the consideration shares to be admitted to trading on AIM on 25 July 2016. The enlarged issued share capital of the BVI company will amount to 311,789,151 ordinary shares of no par value each, with one vote per share.

BVI group completed acquisition of Finance Bank Zambia Limited

BVI-domiciled financial services group Atlas Mara Limited has completed the acquisition of 100 per cent of Finance Bank Zambia Limited and its subsidiaries, for consideration of approximately US$61 million in cash and 3.3 mln of BVI group's shares, not including deferred contingent consideration of up to 1.3 million Atlas Mara shares. Finance Bank Zambia Limited will be combined with African Banking Corporation Zambia Limited, which is a Zambian subsidiary of Atlas Mara Limited. The merged bank, with combined assets of approximately US$567 million as at December 31, 2015, will be one of the largest banks in terms of branch footprint in Zambia. Its physical presence will increase from 23 to 65 branches, 176 ATMs and 23 agencies.

CEO of the BVI financial group said in his comments: "The acquisition of FBZ is another important step in the execution of Atlas Mara's strategy to build sub-Saharan Africa's premier financial institution, in part, by becoming a scale participant in our countries of operation, which this transaction will achieve for us in Zambia..."