Vasile Frank Timis (Frank)

Chairman, African Minerals

Date of Birth: 28/01/1963
Place of Birth: Borsa, Romania

Two iron-hungry Chinese companies have thrown in their lot with one of the mining industry's more colourful figures. Vasile Frank Timis, a London-based, Romanian-Australian businessman, is the chairman of African Minerals, the mining company with rights to what may be one of Africa's largest iron ore deposits.

Timis's notoriety comes in part from the travails of his Regal Petroleum in 2005. Regal's promises of big reserves in a Greek oil field drove its share price to vertiginous heights on the Alternative Investment Market. The share price then plummeted when the bounty failed to flow, taking much of the shareholders' investment with it. AIM later fined Regal £600,000 (US$930,000) for making misleading statements.

Timis does not have the typical chairman's curriculum vitae. Other biographical details have accrued indelibly to such spectacular failure. There is the story of his departure in 1979 from Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania, which he dramatises as a perilous trek to the capitalist freedom of Perth, Australia. There are his arrests for heroin possession during the hardscrabble early years in Australia, where he parlayed a one-truck transport business into his first fortune in gold mining.

In 2005, Timis bought the Sierra Leone Diamond Corporation, listing it on AIM in 2007 as African Minerals. Beyond expansive diamond fields, the company holds rights to the Tonkolili and Marampa iron mines, which the company found in March to contain around 10 billion tonnes of ore. Enter Shandong Iron & Steel Group, which in July announced plans to invest $1.5 bn. in the company. Earlier this year, China Railway Materials Commercial Corporation agreed to pay £153 million for 12.5% of the company and promised to buy 40% of its production.