HB Advisers changes name to Hatch Corporate Finance

November 20, 2006

On the completion of a very successful year, HB Advisers, the leading independent M&A adviser focused on the metals and mining sector, today announces three major developments.

Appointment of Rama Ayman
Rama Ayman joins Mark Burridge as an additional Managing Director at Hatch CF. Rama has more than 15 years M&A and industry experience.  He joins us from Arcelor where he was Corporate Vice President of M&A, managing mergers and acquisitions transactions worldwide. He played a pivotal role in Arcelor’s direct investments in many countries, including, most recently, its first major acquisitions in Eastern Europe and China. This included the landmark acquisition of Laiwu Steel (a top-10 steel producer in China).

Before joining Arcelor in 2002, Rama was a Director of Corporate Finance at BNP Paribas in London where he led origination and execution of M&A and equity capital markets transactions in the natural resources sector. Formerly, Rama was an investment banker in New York with Bankers Trust and Barents Group.

Appointment of John O’Reilly
In addition, Hatch CF has appointed John O’Reilly as a Senior Advisor. John is a mining industry professional with over 38 years experience in the sector.  He spent the last 19 years at Rio Tinto Plc in senior executive positions including Head of Technology, Head of Gold and Other Minerals, and as a Director of Rio Tinto Technical Services Ltd. From 1993 to 1998 he was responsible for the development, construction and operation of the Lihir Gold project in Papua New Guinea, in which Rio Tinto was a major shareholder, and was the first Chief Executive Officer of Lihir Gold Limited. He remains on the Lihir Gold Limited Board as a non-executive director. He was also until 1996  President of the Mineral Industry Research Organisation (MIRO).

John joins another Senior Advisor, Tony Pedder, who has been working with HBA since 2004 and was appointed to our Board in 2005. Tony was previously CEO of Corus and brings a wealth of experience from the Steel sector. He is currently Chairman of the Board of Sheffield Forge Masters and serves on the Board of several other companies.

Trading Name Change
From 15 November 2006, HB Advisers Ltd (“HBA”) will change its trading name to Hatch Corporate Finance (“Hatch CF”) to communicate more clearly to clients that it is a full member of the Hatch group of companies. HBA provides services that are highly complimentary to the broad spectrum of services that hatch Group offers its clients and by more closely aligning the two businesses the relationship between the two is emphasised.

Since it was founded in March 2003, HBA has established a reputation as a leading provider of corporate finance advisory and M&A services to the ferrous and non-ferrous mining, and metals processing sectors worlwide. Hatch is the majority shareholder of Hatch Corporate Finance.

Over the past three years, HBA has successfully advised on a number of major transactions including, most recently, acting for Ivanhoe Mining on the landmark US$1.5 billion investment by Rio Tinto to support Ivanhoe’s development of its Mongolian copper and gold project.