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To: Gord Bolton who wrote (79579)11/26/2001 10:09:14 AM
From: long-gone  Respond to of 116762
 
AngloGold Challenges Newmont’s Offer For Normandy




Date: Monday, November 26, 2001


AngloGold Limited commented today on the Newmont Mining Corporation’s competing takeover offer for Normandy Mining Limited and announced that it would commence action at the Australian Takeovers Panel to challenge certain aspects of Newmont’s proposed offer and arrangements with Franco Nevada.
AngloGold’s Comments on the Newmont Offer

Commenting on Newmont’s offer, AngloGold’s Executive Director and CFO, Jonathan Best, said: “AngloGold considers that Newmont’s offer is a high-risk proposition for Normandy shareholders. We consider that the comparative analysis which Newmont has presented in selling its offer and its characterisation of AngloGold are misleading in a number of ways.” He outlined these as follows:

AngloGold has a superior performance record From both a financial and an operating perspective, AngloGold’s recent performance suggests that it is the preferred choice of investment between the competing companies. Financially,AngloGold’s recent performance has been superior to that of Newmont. For the nine months to 30 September 2001 AngloGold’s headline earnings were US$194 million compared with Newmont’s operating loss of US$8.4 million. Operationally, AngloGold has also produced superior results, with total production costs per ounce of US$211 per ounce for the three months to 30 September 2001 compared with Newmont’s total production costs of US$241 per ounce for the same period.

Newmont has less potential for re-rating Newmont’s offer is predicated on offering Normandy shareholders its paper, which trades at higher multiples than AngloGold, in anticipation of a dramatic rise in the gold price. The risk for Normandy shareholders is a fall in the Newmont share price as it is not supported by the company’s earnings and cashflow. In contrast, while AngloGold has positioned itself so as to benefit from a substantial rise in the gold price, AngloGold is confident that it can deliver attractive returns to shareholders at the present gold price. AngloGold is offering Normandy shareholders a compelling value proposition with significant upside potential, in terms of both price and performance.

AngloGold is a high dividend payer Acceptance of Newmont’s offer is likely to result in a substantial reduction in dividends for Normandy shareholders as Newmont has offered a very low dividend yield in recent years. In contrast, AngloGold pays high dividends and intends to maintain this practice. Normandy shareholders who accept the AngloGold offer (and are on the AngloGold register by the record date) will qualify for the final dividend payable by AngloGold for the financial year ending 31 December 2001. It has been suggested that Newmont does not pay a material dividend because it is a capital growth company. AngloGold has demonstrated that profitable companies are able to grow and to pay healthy dividends.

Newmont’s offer will be value dilutive AngloGold believes Newmont’s offer will be dilutive for Normandy shareholders in terms of earnings, cashflow and net present value per share.

Newmont carries substantial country risk Newmont has claimed that AngloGold carries a higher risk than Newmont does because of its operations in South Africa. In fact, in excess of 100% of Newmont’s profits for the nine months to 30 September 2001 were generated from operations in Bolivia, Indonesia, Peru and Uzbekistan. Newmont’s North American operations, which account for approximately 59% of production, have a total production cost of US$270 per ounce for the nine months to September 2001. Newmont’s North American operations could, at best, be described as high-cost and marginal. AngloGold has a demonstrated track record of closing or selling high-cost marginal operations wherever they might be. The most recent example of this is the sale of AngloGold’s Free State assets which will have the effect of reducing AngloGold’s cash operating costs for the nine months to 30 September from US$184 per ounce to US$175 per ounce on a pro forma basis. This compares with Newmont’s cash operating costs for the same period of US$185 per ounce.

Contravention of Australian Law & Policy

Mr Best said that AngloGold considered that various aspects of the arrangements between Newmont, Franco Nevada and Normandy and the terms of Newmont’s proposed takeover bid “contravened fundamental aspects” of Australian takeover law and policy.

AngloGold’s concerns relate to:

- the special benefits that are to be given to Franco Nevada, its associates and shareholders, that are not being offered to other Normandy shareholders (in particular, the merger proposal pitched at a significant premium to the market price of Franco Nevada’s shares and underlying value of its assets);

- the proposed conditions of Newmont’s takeover bid;

- the apparent breaches of the Foreign Acquisition and Takeovers Act; and

- the break fee arrangements between Newmont and Normandy.

AngloGold believes that these arrangements give rise to unacceptable circumstances. It will be requesting the Takeovers Panel to make the following orders:

- that the option agreement between Newmont and Franco Nevada over 19.9% of Normandy’s shares is set aside; and

- that Newmont must remove the condition of its offer for Franco Nevada which requires Newmont to obtain 50.1% of Normandy and for the Franco Nevada acquisition to be completed, prior to dispatching Newmont’s offer for Normandy.

Alternatively, AngloGold will be seeking an order that Newmont must offer equivalent benefits to other shareholders (valued potentially at up to A$2.25 to A$5.50 per Normandy share in addition to the announced exchange ratio) in addition to the order to set aside the option agreement.

AngloGold considers that the break fee arrangements between Normandy and Newmont contravene the policy of the Takeovers Panel and are unacceptable and should be set aside.

AngloGold is reviewing the legality of these arrangements in other jurisdictions, including Canada, and whether it will also commence legal proceedings in those jurisdictions.

Holders of Normandy shares and Normandy ADSs located in the United States are strongly advised to read the F4 registration statement regarding the offer referred to in this press release and other documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, because they contain important information. Holders of Normandy shares and Normandy ADSs may read and copy these statements at the US Securities and Exchange Commission's public reference rooms. Please call the US Securities and Exchange Commission at +1-800-SEC-0330 for further information on the public reference rooms. These US Securities and Exchange Commission filings are also available to the public from commercial document retrieval services.


Disclaimer
Except for the historical information which may be contained herein, there maybe matters discussed in this news release that are forward-looking statements. Such statements are only predictions and actual events or results may differ materially. For a discussion of important factors including, but not limited to, development of the Company's business, the economic outlook in the gold mining industry, expectations regarding gold prices and production, and other factors, which could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements, refer to the Company's annual report on the Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2000 which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 23, 2001.


anglogold.co.za



To: Gord Bolton who wrote (79579)12/29/2001 2:42:46 PM
From: E. Charters  Respond to of 116762
 
Royal Oak failed to protect themselves on three occasions when they miscalculated the AMOUNT of copper and gold in their mines, in Newfoundland, the NWT and BC. It was BAD grade calc and BAD engineering. The tried too hard to find the large in low grade. Sometimes it's there and sometimes you overstate the grade. I saw schedules of acres of assays of CU and AU in the adjacent property of Stealth Mining that on final report assays at only slightly lower grade than Royal Oak's according some consultants. I saw hundreds of feet of really really low grade stuff, of perhaps only 3 or 4 dollars per ton. And That was iffy. Colomac and Hopebrook same story. Hopeful assay engineering. You have to drill thousands of holes and column leach thousands of times. They did not do enought work. Better to do 20 million in work and get a negative than one million in arm waving and misspend 300 million.

Instead of developing 7 million ounces in cheap Ontario, that REALLY ran 1/10 of an ounce and the labour force knows how to get it out, they went for BC gov't loan guarantees and spent twice what they should have to get going. Ergo insolvency. St Andrews in Timmins made a mine by doing it cheap and in house. Sometimes it makes all the difference.

The South Africans came up with Kreiging to predict grades where it was difficult to know. Better to drill if you can. In worst case with widely separated holes, Krieging "degenerates" to ARITHMETIC AVERAGING. (read the literature - it's true.)

I have the scientific unpatented Charterian technique. Drill lots of holes evenly spaced. Do 2 assay-ton (60 gram) gold "splits" on 200 mesh ground rock on samples no more than 5 pounds in weight. DO NOT cut to one ounce, any assay above one ounce. When grinding the sample crush all 5 pounds. Grind 2.5 pounds of that. Line roll and Jones riffle the 40 ounce of rock, 4 times to whatever it comes to. Assay ALL of that. (Do not spoon out of the top of the bag.) Fire assay that by careful Balling's calculated charge getting 30 grams of lead down. Finish by gravity not AA. Arithmetic average the result and do not smooth, Kreig or cut. Compare every one hundred assays to a 60 punds face sample cyanided and bottle rolled or one pound from each coarse sample over one hundred samples. 98% of the time the final figure is what you will mine.

Dome Mines in Timmins used to find that their fire assayed average of 600 rocks samples taken underground per day was 0.12 ounces per ton. By mining and total mill recovery their head grade was 0.24 ounce per ton or 100% greater.

After mill cleanup every so many years you could add even more to that. In some mills the clean up adds 100%! This is the true meaning of the nugget effect. In some cases it cannot be assayed for. The Salmita mine ran at .06 ounces per ton if one used cutbacks to averages, or smoothing. If one did straight unadulterated arithmetic averaging it looked profitable. It was profitable.

What this means is that ONE MUST use GRAVITY techniques in adition to other methods and/or LONG CYANIDE residency to completely recover gold. You CANNOT know how big the nuggets are. Cyanide residency may have to go to 36 hours or longer depending on the ore. It is a thorny problem. Many mills push the time below 24 hours. They lose. That is why there are SO MANY tailing ponds in Canada with huge grades! I know of a methodology to get marginal gold out of high pyrites tailings that is very profitable.

The single worst blow to the Canadian mining industry was the fiasco of the Timmins tailings recovery attempt. It was 98 million tons of gold ore tailins that could have been recovered at about 90% if you knew how. They made a childish stab at it by attempting to regrind the stuff. Fatal mistake. Working at much higher grade the Kirkland Lake people, Eastmaque, were doing that and it worked. But it was iffy. Their losses and costs were unacceptable except their head was 1/10 of an ounce, so it was forgiving. Timmins was doomed and did fail for reasons among other things of heat oxidization which is classic, and pipes freezing. It was a scam in the making. I estimate 5.4 million ounces of easily recoverable gold is there. Costs to build the plant need not exceed 20 million dollars. In fact a possibly profitable demo could be done for a few hundred thousand. It even works adequately in small scale.

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