The
following nine companies have applied for choice as operator of the Tavantolgoi
deposit. After a process of preliminary elimination, a short list will be
announced tomorrow for the next stage of selection.

•    JMSC
LLC of the Jump group
•    Erdos Investment Holding Group
•    Kores Consortium
•    Shaanxi Coal and Chemical Industry Group
•    Tavan Tolgoi Trans LLC
•    Macmahon Holding Limited
•    Kanu LLC
•    BBM Operta group
•    Leighton Asia Limited.

The most notable names missing from the
list are Peabody Energy and Mitsui. Mongol 999, the Mongolian consortium of
over 1,000 companies, which was formed with the specific purpose of bidding for
the work, has also not applied.

Apart
from JMSC, the only fully-owned Mongolian company is Tavan Tolgoi Trans of
D.Bat-Erdene which has been working in a part of Tavantolgoi for some years.  Its main shareholder is D.Bat-Erdene, a former
MP. He is now a member of the Managing Council of the Mongol 999 National
Union. The company once gave MNT50,000  to all households where it worked.

• As we await Erdenes MGL’s decision, some information
  on some of the bidders from Internet sites is given below.
•     The Erdos Investment Holding
  Group is from China, where it is known as Erdos Xijin Kuangye. It employs
  7,000 workers and has 13 daughter companies. It works mainly in Inner
  Mongolia and exports output from its mines to more than 20 countries.
  •    Korec stands for Korean Resources Corporation and
  is a South Korean consortium of large mining  projects.
  •    Shaanxi Coal and Chemical Industry Group of China
  was established in 2004 and is now the sixth largest mining company in
  China.
  •    Macmahon Holding Limited of Australia was
  established in1965 and works in mining, infrastructure and communication.Besides
  Australia and New Zealand it has projects in Southeast Asia and Africa.
  The company has worked with BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Peabody Energy.
  •    BBM Operta group is a proprietor managed group of
  companies with offices in Germany and Bosnia Herzegovina. The company’s
  portfolio includes services in the fields of open cast mining on solid
  rock, mining, structural, civil and underground engineering and IT/
  document management system (DMS) across Europe.
  •    Leighton Asia Limited is a subsidiary of Leighton
  Holdings Group, established in 1949 in Australia, where it is the largest
  mining operator company now. The company operates the Ukhaa Khudag mine of
  Energy Resource, which is a part of Tavantolgoi.
• The Mongolian-Canadian jointed Kanu LLC