Perth mining identity Milan Jerkovic has made his third trade this year, this time in Geopacific Resources (ASX:GPR).

Mr Jerkovic also sits on the boards of Blackham Resources (ASX:BLK) where he was the only director to support a capital raising in February, and Metals X (ASX:MLX) where he bought 247,500 shares in May.

Last week it was PNG-focused gold miner Geopacific which benefited from his largesse. He spent $100,000 on 2.8 million shares as part of a $10 million capital raising to do more exploration at the Woodlark goldfield.
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A scientist, a soldier and a politician walk into a bar

Investors who like to see director buy-in to companies should look at Electro Optic Systems (ASX:EOS).

Quite aside from being the best performing drone stock on the ASX, its six directors just bought $9 million worth of stock in the business via loans.

Chairman Fred Bart is the man behind Audio Pixels (ASX:AKP) which has been working for more than ten years on a futuristic speaker. While the company has never made a profit, it’s worth almost $500 million.

Electro director Ian Dennis is also a part of that vision.

The rest of the board includes an ex-chief of the Royal Australian Airforce in Geoffrey Brown and the Australian army’s former boss Peter Leahy.

CEO Ben Greene is an expert in space lasers (among other talents) and they round out the team with the Rudd government’s sport former minister Kate Lundy.


 

Doing their bit

Two directors last week gave away shares to charity.

Redbubble (ASX:RBL) boss Martin Hosking and Auroch Minerals (ASX:AOU) chairman Glenn Whiddon both put shares into what’s known as a ‘private ancillary fund’, a legal structure that lets people make tax-deductible donations over long periods of time.

Mr Hosking transferred 2.5 million shares, worth $3.9 million, into the fund he shares with his wife.

He is a former diplomat, having done tours in Egypt and Syria in the 1980s.

Mr Whiddon exercised 750,000 performance rights and put the resulting shares into his own fund called the Pay It Forward Foundation.

He spent three years in Moscow in the heady years after the Soviet Union disintegrated, setting up the Bank of New York’s oil arm there.

Copper Strike’s (ASX:CSE) Harry Hatch might have made the smallest purchase last week — spending the princely sum of $698.40 on 3880 shares.

Proving it’s not the size that counts, the miniature buy-in puts his total stake at 23 million — 21 per cent of the company.

At Strategic Minerals (ASX:SMC) the director who is also trying to take the company over almost has it in the bag.

Christopher Wallin is the sole owner of QGold, which made a 40c bid for Strategic Minerals in December last year.

This month Strategic Minerals independent director Jay Stephenson rejected the offer following an independent expert report saying the sum was not adequate for shareholders who weren’t Mr Wallin.

But since lobbing the bid Mr Wallin, via QGold, has been building a position from just over 3 million shares to 57.4 million last week.

It looks like Strategic Mineral’s fate is sealed with QGold now owning 81 per cent.

Far (ASX:FAR) boss Catherine Norman must be blessing the rains down in Africa, as the oil and gas company’s Senegalese and Gambian ambitions begin to look promising.

Ms Norman put $460,000 into the company last week, raising her stake to 23.4 million shares. Although with 5.6 billion shares on issue, she’s going to need to spend a fair amount more to turn that into a substantial stake.