Kinross Gold fields M&A pitches from bankers
Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:19am EDT
reuters.com
TORONTO (Reuters) - Kinross Gold (K.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is eyeing a wealth of acquisition possibilities and has received a steady stream of pitches from investment bankers hoping to set the senior gold miner up with willing partners, the company's chief executive said on Wednesday.
"There are lots of targets, lots of ideas and actually not a huge number of acquisitors that have the financial strength and experience and the capacity that one needs to make acquisitions," Kinross CEO Tye Burt told the Reuters Global Mining and Steel Summit in New York.
Kinross recently strengthened its balance sheet with a $415 million stock offering and is seeking development properties rather than operating mines, Burt said.
Kinross became Canada's No. 3 gold miner with its 2007 acquisition of Bema Gold and most recently added to its assets by buying Aurelian Resources for its Fruta del Norte property in Ecuador which holds nearly 14 million ounces.
Burt said that he was pleased with a new mining law passed in Ecuador and said that if all goes well Fruta could come to production in 2012 or 2013.
However, he warned not to expect a large Bema-size transaction.
"It tends to be true in our industry that with major acquisitions of producing assets ... it's very hard to add value," he said.
Shares of Kinross were up 4.9 percent at C$19.33 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
(For summit blog: blogs.reuters.com/summits/)
(Reporting by Cameron French, additional reporting by Frank Tang, Euan Rocha, Patrick Fitzgibbons, Michael Erman, Alden Bentley and Steve James; editing by Jim Marshall) |
