Delayed reaction to gold price slump
"Petropavlovsk will this week become the latest gold-miner to be savaged by a fall in the price of the precious metal.
The London-listed company is set to write down up to $390 (£250m) on the value of its assets, roughly equal to the group's entire market capitalisation. The extraordinary hit, to be revealed when it unveils half-year results on Thursday, is due to a 28% drop in the gold price since its high of almost $1,900 an ounce in 2011…
Petropavlovsk, which is run by its co-founder Peter Hambro, is the world's fourth-largest producer and second biggest in Russia after Polyus Gold, which unveiled its own $460 writedown last week…
Hambro has launched a cost-cutting programme that he claimed will slash the group's debt from $1.2bn to less than $1bn by the end of the year…"
