Ashton Mining of Canada Inc - News Release
Ashton's principal shareholder releases target statement
Ashton Mining of Canada Inc ACA
Shares issued 29,249,415 2000-09-12 close $0.77
Wednesday Sep 13 2000 News Release
Mr. Robert Boyd reports
Ashton Mining's principal shareholder, Ashton Mining Limited of Australia (AML), has distributed its target statement to its shareholders in response to the takeover bid announced by De Beers Centenary AG on July 31, 2000. AML holds 68.2 per cent of the 35.9 million common shares of the corporation that are currently issued and outstanding.
Under Australian corporate and securities laws, the target statement is comparable with a directors' circular which would be issued by a Canadian company under similar circumstances. Accordingly, the document includes an independent expert's report (IER) prepared by KPMG Corporate Finance (Aust.) Pty. Ltd. of Melbourne, Australia, and its associated independent technical consultants (collectively, KPMG).
The IER was prepared on behalf of AML to assess the fairness and reasonableness of the De Beers offer to purchase all of AML's common shares at a price of $1.62 (Australian) per share and is intended to determine the fair value of AML as a consolidated entity. In order to make this determination, the valuation considered AML's assets on an individual basis without quantifications of strategic value for AML as a whole or on an asset-by-asset basis. As part of this exercise, KPMG has inferred a value for the corporation's assets of $37,122,000 (Australian) to $48,322,000 (Australian), which corresponds to a value of $1.03 (Australian) to $1.35 (Australian) for each of the corporation's common shares.
Given that the IER was prepared on behalf of AML solely for the purpose of responding to the De Beers takeover bid, and noting that it does not include any allowance for the strategic value of the corporation as a going concern, the corporation neither endorses nor rejects the IER's conclusions and the range of values for the corporation's assets. |
