ATW settles C$4.78 million tranche; Fidelity secures $250 million; Hardy Oil to raise £10.8 million

By Stephanie N. Rotondo

Portland, Ore., April 1 - ATW Gold Corp. announced Wednesday that it had completed the first part of its two part private placement.

The gold mining company raised C$3.6 million in the first tranche and another C$1.28 million is expected to close by the end of the week. A company spokesperson told Prospect News that investor response to the deal was positive and that the company could have easily doubled the amount taken in.

Meanwhile, Fidelity National Information Services Inc. arranged a $250 million stock sale, according to a regulatory filing. The placement came as the company also announced a merger agreement with Metavante Technologies Inc.

Hardy Oil and Gas PLC secured £10.8 million of financing via a private stock placement. The company plans to use proceeds to further exploration activities.

Sunesis Pharmaceuticals Inc. will sell preferred units and common stock to raise up to $43.5 million, the company said in a press release. Proceeds will be used for general working purposes.

ATW settles first tranche

ATW Gold settled the first tranche of a two-tranche private placement of units, the company announced Wednesday.

In the first tranche of the non-brokered deal, ATW sold 5.8 million of a total 7.71 million units consisting of one common share and one half-share warrant for C$0.62. Each whole warrant is exercisable at C$0.80 for one year.

Of the C$3.6 million raised in the first tranche, Sprott Asset Management Inc. invested C$3.5 million.

Additionally, ATW said that the deal, which originally priced on March 27 at C$4.5 million, was oversubscribed. The new expected total of the transaction is C$4.78 million.

"We could probably double the money," Kyle Stevenson, a company representative, told Prospect News. However, Stevenson said the company was going to "cut off" the offering now that it had succeeded in raising the intended funds.

"We had the financing closed before we even announced it," Stevenson added, noting that investors had reacted positively to the deal.

Proceeds from the financing will be used to start a drill program at ATW's Gullewa Gold Mine, Stevenson stated. The property, located in Perth, Western Australia, is about 300 kilometers southwest of the company's Burnakura Gold Mine. Stevenson said that there is already a rig onsite.

"We just need to start it up and start drilling," he said.

ATW's stock (TSX Venture: ATW) increases 2 cents, or 2.38%, to C$0.86.

ATW Gold is a Vancouver, B.C.-based gold exploration company.

Fidelity secures $250 million

Fidelity National Information Services raised $250 million through a private placement of stock, the company said in a regulatory filing.

The Jacksonville, Fla.-based company entered into the placement agreement with affiliates of Thomas H. Lee Partners LP and Fidelity National Financial Inc. on Tuesday, according to the 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company will issue approximately 16 million common shares under the terms of the agreement.

Furthermore, the financing arrangement was arranged simultaneously with a plan to merge with Metavante Technologies Inc. Metavante's shareholders will receive 1.35 shares of Fidelity stock for every one Metavante share. Pro forma enterprise value of the combined enterprise will be about $10 billion.

The all-stock merger deal is valued at $2.94 billion.

"We've got a $4 billion hole we're looking to fill, but along with the transaction costs, we needed more," George Scanlon, Fidelity National's chief financial officer, said on the conference call held Wednesday with analysts.

"We're going to raise $250 million of equity from Fidelity National and Thomas H. Lee, who is an investor with us. They committed to provide the funds at closing," Scanlon said. "This strengthens the balance sheet and the debt capital markets have a lot of friction in them, so we thought this was the best approach to take."

Fidelity said it would issue about 162 million shares to Metavante shareholders. At closing, the combined company would have about 374 million shares outstanding.

The deal will create the world's largest provider of integrated payment and financial processing services and is expected to close in the third quarter.

Fidelity's equity (NYSE: FIS) declined 8.24% to $16.70. Market capitalization is $3.29 billion.

Fidelity National is a provider of core processing for financial institutions; card issuer and transaction processing services; mortgage loan processing and mortgage-related information products.

Hardy raises £10.8 million

Hardy Oil and Gas conditionally raised £10.8 million via an equity private placement, according to a press release.

The London-based oil and gas company issued 6.2 million ordinary shares at 174p per share. Arden Partners underwrote the deal.

The newly issued shares represent about 10% of the company's total equity. Yogeshwar Sharma, one of Hardy's directors, purchased 28,735 of the shares in the offering, bringing his total interest in the company to approximately 4.1 million shares, or 6.1% of the share capital.

"We are delighted with the strong support from our investors," said Sastry Karra, Hardy's chief executive officer, in a statement. "The placing will help us facilitate further exploration activities across our portfolio of assets, including those in the D3 and D9 areas of the prolific Krishna Godavari Basin in India."

Hardy's stock (London: HDY) closed at 205p.

Sunesis to sell preferreds, stock

Sunesis Pharmaceuticals is planning a $43.5 million private placement of convertible preferred and common stock, the company announced.

Under the terms of the deal, about $15 million of preferred units will be sold at $3.75 per unit in two tranches of $10 million and $5 million. Each preferred unit will contain one preferred share and one warrant good for 10 common shares. Each preferred is convertible into 10 common shares and each warrant is exercisable at $0.22 per common share for seven years.

Also, Sunesis will issue approximately 103.6 million common shares at $0.275 per share for a total of $28.5 million.

Participants in the offering include funds managed by Bay City Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Alta Partners, Caxton Advantage Life Sciences Fund, Merlin Nexus, Nextech Venture, OpusPoint Partners, Venrock Associates and Vision Capital Advisors, according to a press release. Company management also participated.

"Following last year's restructuring to focus our resources on advancing our promising lead oncology product candidate, voreloxin, we are pleased to note the significant patient accrual, investigator interest and growing body of evidence of voreloxin's therapeutic potential across our acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and ovarian cancer phase 2 clinical trials," said Daniel Swisher, Sunesis' CEO, in the release. "The resulting progress has enabled us to attract a syndicate of supportive investors to this tranched financing that has the potential to support voreloxin through late stage development in AML and to the anticipated filing of an NDA. In the midst of a difficult financing market, we are pleased to have the opportunity to realize the potential for voreloxin to be a first-in-class anti-cancer agent for treating these diseases, and potentially other hematologic and solid tumors."

During a conference call to discuss its fourth-quarter results, Swisher said that funds procured from the first tranche are expected to fund operations through the end of 2009. He also added that the proceeds would allow the company to complete its clinical studies.

In total, Swisher said that the funds from the placement, combined with cash on hand, should be enough to fund the late stage development and new drug application for voreloxin.

Sunesis' equity (Nasdaq: SNSS) gained 2 pennies, or 10%, to $0.22. Market capitalization is $7.56 million.

Sunesis Pharmaceuticals is a South San Francisco, Calif.-based biopharmaceutical company focused on cancer treatments.

Cristal Cody contributed to this article.

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