My latest essay, Predation Wearing the Mask of Civilization, examines how institutions can preserve the outward appearance of civilization while being emptied of their moral substance. Courts, police, bureaucracy, laws, forms, seals, and procedures may all remain in place. But when the society beneath them lacks restraint, honesty, shame, and a working sense of justice, those institutions no longer protect civilization. They become instruments of extraction.
This builds on my earlier argument in Institutions Cannot Be Transplanted. Institutions do not work because they are written into law or copied from a more advanced society. They work only when the moral and cultural substrate underneath them gives them life. Without that substrate, the form survives, but the function reverses. What was meant to restrain power becomes a machinery for exercising it.
On Investments
Cygnus Metals, listed as CYG on the TSX Venture Exchange and CY5 on the ASX, is being acquired by Central Asia Metals (CAML) in London. Under the proposed transaction, CYG shareholders are to receive 0.06 CAML shares for each CYG share held. Based on CAML’s recent price and the current GBP/CAD exchange rate, this implies a value of roughly C$0.153 per CYG share, or about an 18% arbitrage spread from CYG’s recent price of C$0.13.
The attraction is straightforward. CAML is a producing base-metals company with operating assets in Kazakhstan and North Macedonia, and the acquisition gives it exposure to Cygnus’s Chibougamau copper-gold project in Quebec. For CYG shareholders, the transaction converts a small, illiquid exploration company into shares of a larger, cash-flowing producer.
I find the situation interesting because these kinds of cross-border small-cap mining arbitrage opportunities are often overlooked and over-discounted for the risks.
CAML has agreed to use reasonable endeavors to obtain a Canadian listing before the deal is implemented.
Jayant Bhandari
Disclosure and disclaimer: These are my personal observations, not investment advice. I may own, buy, or sell securities mentioned. Please do your own due diligence. [Full disclaimer →]