After several years in limbo the shell began a new life with its sights firmly set on the potential of its new mission to find metals in Serbia.

The company hit the ASX at A2.8c this morning, and immediately fell to its low of 2.6c, before finishing the day at 3.1c, giving it a market capitalisation of $12.7 million.

In all some $851,000 worth of shares changed changes.

One of Raiden’s first moves on hitting the bourse was to launch a share buyback pitched at the 560 shareholders left with less than marketable parcels of shares.

Those shareholders control some 1.2 million shares, or just 0.005% of the 410 million shares in the market.

By contrast the top 20 of the company’s 970 shareholders controlled around 53% of the company this morning.

The buyback offer is at 2c, the same level as January’s $5 million capital raising.

In October the shell entered into a deed of company arrangement with Faldi Ismail’s Perth-based fund Otsana Capital, which paid $440,000 to extinguish the company’s debts

By November it had agreed a deal with WA-based Timok Resources, which brought a “first mover advantage to large scale copper and associated intrusive-related precious and polymetallic mineralisation in the prolific West Tethyan Metallogenic Belt in Eastern Europe”, the company said.

Timok’s six leases and four applications include some areas with historic copper-gold mines, and an area once explored by Rio Tinto for both high-grade gold-bearing epithermal vein mineralisation and deeper copper porphyry targets in Europe. 

Several other areas have polymetallic potential.

The company intends to spend about $3.7 million in Balkans exploration over the next two years.

The board comprises accountant Michael Davy as chairman, former BHP Billiton executive Martin Pawlitschek, MHM director Nicholas Young and managing director Dusko Ljubojevic, a former executive at Barrick Gold.