BVI Company News

Recently BrazMin has sold all of its interests in the Tocantinzinho gold project area in Brazil. The purchaser was Brazauro Resources Corporation. On October 17, 2006 BrazMin has announced the commencement of drilling on the Agua Branca Gold Project, located within the Tapajós Gold District in Pará State, Brazil. The Phase I Diamond Drill Program aims in testing gold mineralized structures along the Camarão Hill area.

The target selection for initial testing is based on the results of geological mapping, channel sampling and geophysical surveys which commenced in July 2006. The results for 384 samples from 141 channels, distributed in five target areas included in Agua Branca, were reported in a BrazMin news release on September 19, 2006. Current report includes results for the next 225 channel samples; the total amount makes 395 channel samples collected at Agua Branca.

Recent notification from the Brazilian Mining Department stated that the converted exploration licences at Agua Branca have been transferred into the name of BrazMin’s 100%-owned Brazilian subsidiary. Two final property payments of US$230,000 remain on the Agua Branca exploration licences.

The second announcement of BrazMin Corp., published on October 13, 2006, was the continuation of the press release dated September 1, 2006 for the Company’s São Jorge Gold Project which is also located in Pará State, Brazil. This report, entitled “Resource Estimate and Technical Report for the São Jorge Project, Brazil” and dated October 12, 2006, was prepared my Mr. G. David Keller, who is a professional geoscientist with the Association of Professional Geoscientists of Ontario and an employee of an international minerals consultancy group SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc.

Oriel Resources Plc, a UK-based chrome and nickel exploration and mining company, has announced in mid October that it has entered into two separate but inter-conditional acquisition agreements.

The first agreement is connected with Oriel’s acquiring IPH Polychrom Holding BV (“IPH”) - an unlisted Dutch holding company which is at an advanced stage of constructing a ferrochrome smelter at Tikhvin near St Petersburg, Russia.

Under the second agreement, Oriel Resources Plc will acquire Croweley International Limited – an unlisted company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Currently the company’s 100% beneficial owner is Alexander Nesis. At the moment of purchase, Croweley’s only asset will be cash of US$100,000,000. Oriel will purchase 100% of the issued share capital of Croweley in exchange for the issue of 102,880,584 Ordinary Shares.

These two acquisitions together make a reverse takeover of Oriel under the AIM Rules, and in each case of acquisition the consideration will be the issue by Oriel of new Ordinary Shares.

The limited liability company Home Inns and Hotel Management Inc., which was incorporated 4 years ago in Hong Kong and now, being based in Shanghai, operates under its own brand 82 hotels in 26 cities of China, is now going to develop the chain of economy hotels for budget travelers in the country. It is one of the newest business segments in China’s growing economy in the last years, and there is an increasing demand for a standardized chain of lower-priced hotels. Observers note that Home Inns is already a well-known brand name in China, and the fact that it is focused solely on the country internal market in a relatively new business segment, could seem attractive to investors.

The biggest shareholder of Home Inns and Hotel Management Inc. is Poly Victory Investments Inc., a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and having registered office at Palm Grove House, P.O. Box 438, Road Town, Tortola. Poly Victory is owned by the Chinese state enterprise Beijing Tourism Group. On May 24, 2004, by the bilateral agreement with Home Inns, it has agreed to subscribe for 13,219,140 Ordinary Shares of the Hong Kong company. This amount makes 55% of all the Ordinary Shares of Home Inns and Hotels Management Limited.

The second major shareholder is another Hong Kong company Top Sterling International Limited, which holds 9,000,000, or 37% of Ordinary Shares.

The minor shareholders holding less than 5% Ordinary Shares are Qi Ji, Hui Chen, Ri Xin Liang (Mainland companies), Nan Pen Shen (Hong Kong company); Hong Kong company AsiaStar IT Fund L.P. and China mainland company IDG Technology Venture Investments, LP are the major shareholders of Series A and Series B Shares.

Along with the new hotel chain project, Home Inns has another 57 hotel properties under development. In the first half of 2006, the company’s total revenue more than doubled to $31.2 million, and its net income tripled to $3.4 million, as the number of its hotels grew from the same period of 2005.

About 77% of Home Inn’s hotel properties involve leased real estate on which the company develops and operates hotels. The rest 23% include franchise agreements with hotel owners, with Home Inns managing the properties. The company’s model is to focus most of its business on franchising and management aagreements, selling off their properties to third parties rather than holding on to real estate assets.

SUAL Group, which has recently announced about its merger with another leading Russian Aluminium Company Rusal, has reported its production results for the first nine months of 2006. For the whole Group, the main production lines exhibited stable growth compared to the same period of 2005.

For the first nine months of 2006, the Group’s enterprises extracted 4.5 million tonnes of bauxite, an increase of 13.4% as compared to January-September 2005. Also, for this period SUAL Group’s enterprises refined 1.7 million tonnes of alumina, which was a slight decrease of 0.4% on the year. Across the whole Group the main production lines exhibited stable growth compared to the same period of 2005.

During the first nine months of this year, SUAL Group’s enterprises produced 793,900 tonnes of primary aluminium, which made an increase of 1.5% during the first three quarters of 2005. The increase was achieved as a result of the continued successful implementation of technological development and modernisation programmmes at all of the company’s aluminium smelters.

For the first nine months of 2006 the SUAL Group’s enterprises decreased their silicon production by 5.6%. This reduction of production volumes can be explained by an unfavourable market situation affecting Russian silicon producers, the increasingly prohibitive US and EU import tariffs against Russian silicon and the expanded dumping of Chinese producers.

The general strategy of SUAL Group is the continuing modernisation of production facilities and efficient marketing policies. The volume of production of rolled and semi-finished products for the first nine months of 2006 increased by 20% on the year. Foil and aluminium band production increased by 4.3%. In January-September 2006 year-on-year consumer goods production increased by 1.2%.

The company SUAL ranks among the world’s ten largest aluminium producers and holds its assets with a BVI-based SUAL International.

On October 18, 2006 BVI-registered company Empire Online Ltd has announced the results for the six months ended 30 June 2006. The main operating and financial highlights have shown the significant decline in net gaming revenues, which made $38.2m for the first half of 2006, while for the same period of 2005 they were $49.7m.

Such amount in 2005 to much extent arose from the Playtech licencees acquired in the second half of 2005. Playtech Ltd., which is also incorporated in the BVI, provides software for the Empire Online; the last one, in its turn, specializes in marketing services to the online gaming industry. Both companies were touched by the crisis in the US online gambling industry, which happened in the end of September and led to the plunging of the shares of the leading companies having business in this sphere.

This amount in 2006 was reduced because of the diminishing of Poker revenues due to the termination of Empire Poker following the settlement agreement with Partygaming plc in February 2006. Total casino revenues for the first six months of 2006 rose to $30.2m ($10.7m for the same period of 2005), while poker revenues fell from $39.0m in the first half of 2005 to $8.0m in 2006.

Gross profit for the first half of 2006 was $17.6m and constituted 46.1% of revenue, while for this period of 2005 it was $21.1m, or 50.3% of revenue. Gross profit margin has reduced due to the change in product offer towards casino activities. The company’s chief executive has noted in his statement to the report, that the normal slow down in trading activity which was seen in the second quarter of 2006, have been more pronounced if compared to the previous years, and in connection to this earnings growth for 2007 may become challenging.

The decrease of some positions reflected in the company report may be explained with the regulatory uncertainty which was always faced by the online gaming industry and has even increased due to the recent events. However, Empire Online Ltd. is one of the major London-listed online gambling companies, so it can also benefit from the new Internet Gambling Law.

On October 12, 2006 BVI incorporated CIC Energy Corp. has reported losses for the three and nine month periods ended August 31, 2006. These losses can be explained by the increase of non-capitalized exploration expenditures, administration costs and other extraordinary costs connected with the consolidation of Coal Investment Corp. and Ophir Ventures Inc., which occurred in March 2006, as well as the subsequent listing of the common shares of CIC.

The loss for the three month period ended August 31, 2006 constituted $702,445, or $0.02 per share, and the loss for the nine months was $2,380,103 or $0.08 per share. Capitalized exploration costs amount to $41,942,771, the exploration costs for the nine month period totalled $38,206,662.

Consolidated Interim Financial Statements for the three and nine months ending August 31, 2006, along with Management’s Discussion and Analysis, have been filed on SEDAR and are available at www.sedar.com - filing system of Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA).

Guangdong Chigo Air Conditioner Co.,Ltd. has just finished its registration in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and financial reorganization and restructuring. Now, together with another private enterprise working in the same China region, which is going to launch stocks in Singapore, it will submit materials to the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (SEHK) in November 2006, and move to the Hong Kong market.

The company Guangdong Chigo Air Conditioner is a large-scale private enterprise, currently registered in the British Virgin Islands and conducting business in Foshan, Guangdong province. It was founded in 1994 by Mr. Li Xinghao. The company has annual output of 10 million air conditioners, and is going to move to the market of Hong Kong as BVI offshore company.

Britain may bring in legislation allowing London-listed gambling companies to move their headquarters to Britain. The Sunday Times newspaper reported that it had seen documents in which the government said the move to Britain would provide Britain’s online gamblers with a “safe, well-regulated environment”. By the paper’s information, also the Department for Culture, Media and Sport had been lobbying the Treasury to introduce a favorable tax regime for online gambling companies.

The biggest London-listed Internet gambling company PartyGaming Plc is based in Gibraltar, and is placed in the blue-chip FTSE 100 index. The company 888 Holdings Plc. which is one of the world’s most popular online gaming companies, is also incorporated in Gibraltar.

Amongst the major London-listed internet gambling companies there is BVI-based Empire Online Ltd, which also has arrangements to market Casino-On-Net (part of 888.com). The company is a leading provider of marketing services to the online gaming industry. Using online and offline advertising and marketing techniques, the Empire Online Group directs new players to its online poker and online casino websites. Software for Empire Online Ltd is provided by Playtech – a BVI incorporated company which is one of the leading software providers in the industry.

Other marketing techniques of Empire Online Ltd include the registration of suitable domain names for the purpose of redirecting internet traffic and the use of marketing agents. More recently, the Group has used offline marketing campaigns which have shown significant results.

Some time ago, the U.S. Congress also approved a bill to make it illegal for banks to process payments to gaming Web sites. This decision made most European operators to pull out of the United States, and hit the share prices of the U.S. companies.

Diguang International will present to an audience of approximately 150-200 investors at the Second Annual Adam Friedman Associates China Growth Conference, which will take place in October 17-18. This event will be webcast to thousands more investors both in the U.S. and China, especially interested in Chinese securities.

Diguang is a Nevada corporation, which, through its subsidiaries, specializes in the research, development, production, sale and distribution of backlights for liquid crystal displays (LCD’s) and backlight technologies. Its manufacturing subsidiary located in Shenzhen, PRC, and international sales and marketing subsidiary located in the British Virgin Islands.

The company Diguang International is focused on providing LED and CCFL backlights for international producers of televisions, monitors, cellular phones, digital cameras, DVDs and other home appliances. Currently it develops about 50 new products per month. These products are generally exported to the regions and countries such as Europe, North America, Korea and Japan as well as sold to Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland of China, etc. So far, Diguang Company has received 8 national patents in independent intellectual property on the optoelectronic guiding and controlling technology. Today the company has become one of the well-known enterprises in the global optoelectronic display industry.

Afriore Limited, mainly engaged in the mineral exploration projects in South Africa, has announced its financial results for the three and six month periods ended August 31, 2006. After the significant losses of the previous period ended on May 31, 2006, which could be explained by the increase at Akanani expenditure, the company, again, reported on a loss for the three month period of $5,120,490 or $0.10 per share, and a loss for the six month period ended August 31, 2006 of $6,122,621 or $0.14 per share.

These losses are also explained with a significant increase in exploration expenditure for Akanani project, which is currently the most important development of Afriore. It is enough to say that from the exploration costs for the six months period that totalled $4,053,364, $3,683,958 were for Akanani. The increase in Akanani expenditure followed the continuing receipt of positive results from the Project’s intensive exploration program.

Afriore has reported also on a foreign exchange loss of $2,116,269 for the six months of 2006, compared to $503,699 for the same period of 2005. For this, the substantial weakening of the South African Rand can be responsible, as well as Stock Based Compensation expense of $3,685,000 resulting from revaluing of 2,500,000 warrants per the Black-Scholes method, issued in terms of an agreement between Afriore and the original Black Economic Empowerment Shareholders of Akanani Mining Limited.

In the report Afriore announced on its plans to continue concentrating on the acquisition, exploration and development of resource properties in Africa and elsewhere, and in particular to concentrate on platinum group and gold metals.