canoe.com
According to this report Lundins wanted $6.75. What do you think they want now?
For Friday, January 29, 1999
Argentina Gold still wants
more
By JOHN SCHREINER
The Financial Post
Argentina Gold Corp. continued to
campaign yesterday for a takeover offer
better than $5 a share, while its shareholders
were forced to decide whether or not to
tender to the Barrick Gold Corp. offer that
expired a minute after midnight.
The Vancouver company pleaded with
shareholders not to tender their shares. It
released more assays from its first diamond
drill hole on its 60%-owned Veladero
project in the Argentinean Andes in a
last-gasp effort to attract a white knight.
Sophia Shane, the company's director of
investor relations, described the assay results
as "fabulous . . . We could indeed get an
overall increase in grade at this target and
that would affect the overall valuation of the
company." The company reported a
105-metre-long mineralized section of core
averaging 17.87 grams of gold and 72.73
grams of silver per tonne.
On Wednesday, Barrick succeeded in
having the B.C. Securities Commission strike
down Argentina Gold's poison pill
implemented Jan. 19.
"The shareholders of Argentina Gold must
be given the opportunity to decide for
themselves whether the price offered by
Barrick is adequate," BCSC chairman
Douglas Hyndman said after a day-long
lawyer-filled hearing that stretched to 9 p.m.
Barrick, which already owns 9.9% of the
shares, wants at least 50.1% of the common
shares.
"It was obviously time for the poison pill to
go," said Paul Melnuk, Barrick's president.
"Fifty days have passed since the
announcement of our offer and there have not
been any competing bids."
The Toronto-based company already has a
40% interest in the Veladero project, which
is only six kilometres from a large
gold-bearing Barrick property.
Testimony at the hearing, which was
instigated by Barrick, suggested that
Argentina Gold fumbled its defence by not
being aggressive enough initially in looking
for an alternative suitor after rejecting
Barrick's opening $4-a-share bid on Dec. 9.
It later was increased to $5, still well short
of the $6 to $6.75 that Argentina Gold wants.
At first, the junior producer courted Placer
Dome Inc. of Vancouver and Newmont Gold
Corp. of Denver.
"We were very confident that Newmont was
going to bid," said William Rand, a director
of Argentina Gold and an adviser to Adolf
and Lukas Lundin, the principal shareholders
of Argentina Gold.
However, Newmont declined to commit
itself, despite regular meetings and phone
calls. Finally, on Jan. 14, Argentina Gold
hired ScotiaMcLeod Inc. to solicit other bids
and, on the brokerage firm's advice, adopted
the poison pill to prevent Barrick from
concluding its takeover before mid-February.
William Gula, who headed the
ScotiaMcLeod team, testified that his firm
was able to invigorate the languishing
auction of Argentina Gold by making calls to
about 30 potential suitors. By the middle of
this week, he said, four had signed
confidentiality agreements, a fifth was close
to signing and four were reviewing
information packages. He did not name the
companies.
Ms. Shane said that one company, which
she did not name, was on the Veladero site
yesterday. |
