Saying it did not offer enough value to the gold miner’s shareholders, Centamin has rejected an all-stock takeover proposal from Canada’s Endeavour Mining, saying it did not offer enough value to Centamin shareholders.
Toronto-listed Endeavour announced its £1.47bn (US$1.9bn) offer, a 13% premium to Centamin’s last closing price, earlier in the day, seeking to gain control of Centamin’s only operating mine, the Sukari project in Egypt.
The Canadian firm says Centamin has rebuffed several attempts to engage in talks.
Centamin says: “The terms of the proposal provide comparatively greater benefit to Endeavour’s shareholders, do not adequately reflect the contribution that Centamin would make to the merged entity.”
Endeavour says that it planned to offer 0.0846 of its own shares for each Centamin share, equivalent to about 126.27 pence per share.
Endeavour says that the combined entity would have produced 1.2 million ounces of gold in 2019 at an all-in sustainable cost of $875 per ounce, which would make it one of the world’s largest and lowest cost miners.
Mark Burridge, fund manager at Baker Steel Capital Managers which owns shares in Centamin and Endeavour, says that the deal was compelling because it would create a larger and “more investible” entity.
