The Financial Post reports in its Saturday edition two years after being sacked as Barrick Gold's chief executive officer, Aaron Regent is back in the mining game with a big buy he calls the "first of many." The Post's Nicolas Van Praet writes Mr. Regent's private equity-backed Magris Resources and some Asian investors are buying Iamgold's Niobec mine in Quebec for $500-million in cash. The buyers have agreed to pay another $30-million for a nearby rare-earth-element deposit when it goes into production. The market has been rife with speculation about Mr. Regent's deal-making following his termination at Barrick. For nearly every asset rumoured to be on the market, Mr. Regent's name popped up as a potential buyer. He was linked to a group working on a bid for Glencore Xstrata's Las Bambas copper mine in Peru, and he was said to have made an approach for Freeport-McMoRan's Candelaria copper mine in Chile. This is the first acquisition for Magris. The financial backers are Signapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings and CEF Holdings Ltd., a Hong-Kong investment firm owned by billionaire Li Ka-shing's Cheung Kong Holdings and CIBC. Magris has a bias toward assets located in the Americas.