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Gold/Mining/Energy : Barrick Gold (ABX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Enigma who wrote (984)	2/19/1999 10:02:00 AM
From: Enigma	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3558

Sutton: B: Barrick Gold makes bid for Sutton Resources TORONTO, Feb 18, 1999 (The Canadian Press via COMTEX) -- Barrick Gold Corp. surprised the market with a $525-million all-stock bid for exploration firm Sutton Resources Ltd. on Thursday, only 10 days after the Toronto gold giant's hostile bid for Argentina Gold Corp. went sour. The deal values the shares of Vancouver-based Sutton, owner of a promising gold property in Tanzania, at $13.25 each. That is an 89 per cent premium on Sutton's Wednesday closing price of $7. News of the friendly deal sent Sutton shares soaring 74 per cent Thursday to a 52-week high of $12.20 in heavy trading. Analysts believe Sutton's long-suffering investors will be eager to accept the offer. In recent years, the company's exploration and development program has been marred by boardroom skirmishes and management disputes. ''Sutton shareholders deserve this,'' said Dorothy Atkinson, analyst at Vancouver's IPO Capital Ltd. ''This deal is what everybody's waiting for for several years.'' Sutton institutional investors including Toronto's Altamira Financial Services Ltd. and Fidelity Investments of Boston declined to comment. The company's key asset is the Bulyanhulu property, the largest gold deposit in east Africa. Bulyanhulu contains an estimated 8.8 million ounces of gold, about half of which can be mined for as little as $150 US an ounce. If the takeover is successful, Bulyanhulu will be Barrick's first project in Africa and will boost its gold resources from 68.3 million ounces to 77.1 million. Barrick investors were not enthusiastic toward the deal Thursday, driving the stock down as much as $1.35. The shares recovered somewhat to close at $27.20, down 80 cents on the day. That knocked about $300 -million off Barrick's market value. ''The market's basically taken most of this acquisition out of the stock,'' said David Davidson, analyst at Toronto's Newcrest Capital Inc. Concerns stem from the healthy premium Barrick is paying for a little-known company in an unpredictable corner of the globe, analysts say. In 1991, Barrick rival Placer Dome Inc. abandoned Bulyanhulu when the government refused to renew the Vancouver company's lease. dd