The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition private-equity interest in mining companies has waned. The Globe's Rachelle Younglai writes private equity was recently all the rage, but today, many of the big funds have not made mining investments and others have simply given up. Globally, private-equity mining deals have slipped. Last year, the private pools of capital were involved in 66 deals worth $5-billion, compared with 83 transactions worth $6.7-billion in 2010. In Canada, private equity was involved in 34 mining deals in 2014, roughly the same as in 2010 when commodity prices were climbing. Small miners, which have come to Toronto for the annual Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference, had been hoping private equity would help provide much needed capital. That has not happened. The reality is that the traditional private-equity "buyout" model of buying a distressed company, fixing it and then selling it over a short period of time is harder to pull off in mining. Former Barrick chief executive officer Aaron Regent recently bought Iamgold's niobium mine and rare earth deposit for $530-million. That acquisition came two years after Mr. Regent first contacted Iamgold.