Equinox Minerals begins process of acquiring Lundin Mining
By Gift Chanda
Wed 09 Mar. 2011, 03:59 CAT [641 Reads, 0 Comment(s)] Text size Print
EQUINOX Minerals Limited, Lumwana’s parent company, says it is proceeding with its offer to acquire Lundin Mining Corporation.
Company chief executive officer Craig Williams announced in a statement that the company had formally offered to buy shares in Vancouver-based Lundin Mining.
According to Equinox, the offer would remain open until April 14.
“I believe we have put an attractive offer to shareholders of Lundin and this transaction will create value for shareholders of both Equinox and Lundin.
“The clearly superior premium we are offering over the nil-premium merger with Inmet represents an offer that should provide a platform for the successful combination of our two businesses,” Williams said.
Equinox first announced plans for its offer a week ago. If successful, the bid threatens to upset a planned merger between Lundin and another Canadian miner, Inmet Mining.
The two companies said in January they had agreed on a no-premium merger of equals, to create a new copper firm called Symterra.
Inmet and Lundin on Sunday postponed shareholder votes on the merger agreement to give Lundin shareholders time to consider the Equinox offer.
The Equinox offer for Lundin is a 26 per cent premium to the company's closing price on the last trading day before it was announced.
Equinox said once the deal was complete, the combined company would have a geographically diverse portfolio of complementary assets with a balanced pipeline of growth projects and an industry leading production target of approximately 500,000 tonnes per annum of copper production by 2016.