Mining bosses have lost billions of rands following the poor showing of their companies’ share prices since the beginning of this year.

This reminds analysts about the period when black economic empowerment (BEE) deals that were pegged against the performance of the share prices of underlying companies took a  thorough beating after the outbreak of the global economic meltdown in 2007.

Calculations released by brokerage firm, Vestact, show that African Rainbow Minerals’ Patrice Motsepe, Assore’s Des Sacco and Exxaro Resources’ Sipho Nkosi lost a total R3.7 billion ($369 million) from January to the end of May this year.

The stock price of Rainbow Minerals (ARM) lost more than R4 billion ($400 million) starting from January until now because of the less-than-impressive price of iron and platinum.

Des Sacco, chairperson of Assore, a firm which has shareholdings in SA’s manganese and iron ore export industries, felt more pain than the others. Sacco’s Assore share price lost R2.27 billion  ($227 million) this year.

Sipho Nkosi, CEO of Exxaro Resources, a firm heavily dependent on the price of thermal coal, had his 3 percent stake in the firm lessened to R291 million since the beginning of the year.

The price of thermal has fallen by about a quarter last year.

Most BEE companies that were formed through special purpose vehicles (SPV) model have seen their BEE deals collapse and they lost money.

Most of them have had to be refinanced by the banks and others have been battling to recover ever since.

To this day, BEE pundits have decided to do away with the SPV model as it really does suffer because it is pegged against the performance of the share price of the underlying companies.