GLG's unusually strong showing all day today - as opposed to all other miners - may be explained by the following:
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Shares in Glamis Gold Ltd. (GLG.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) , which has made a hostile $2.7 billion offer for Goldcorp Inc. (G.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) , rose on Friday as some investors bet its bid might fail, relieving some of the pressures on it of swallowing a larger competitor.
Shares in Glamis rose 57 Canadian cents, or 3 percent, to C$20.30 as the miner revealed it had lost the support of "a decent-sized" institution as it enters the final days of a bruising contest for Goldcorp, which has its own deal in the works to buy Wheaton River Minerals Ltd. (WRM.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) .
"The institution holds some Goldcorp stock. But it's not going to affect the outcome of the vote according to our numbers," said Kevin McArthur, the chief executive of Reno, Nevada-based Glamis.
He declined to name the institution but said the stock was held in a small-companies fund, which could not invest in a firm as big as the combined Glamis-Goldcorp would be.
Goldcorp's shareholders vote next Thursday on whether to back the board-approved purchase of Wheaton River Minerals, a Vancouver-based copper and gold mining company. A "yes" vote for Wheaton will result in Glamis pulling its bid.
McArthur said he was confident that asset managers Fidelity Investments, which is Goldcorp's biggest institutional investor with about a 15 percent stake, would back the Glamis bid.
"I'm relying on their recent strong support of our stock... They have been supportive of me coming and having conversations on our business development activities in a very general way and becoming a consolidator in the mid-tier sector of the gold industry," McArthur told Reuters.
But Goldcorp and Wheaton chief executives are equally certain of winning the bid battle. |
