The battle for control of the struggling OZ Minerals is about to heat up.
Chinese group, Minmetals has made an agreed $2.6 billion offer at 82.5 cents a share, but investors are not taking it seriously, keeping the OZ share price well under the offer price. OZ shares traded at 66.5 cents late this morning.
Tomorrow, Oz Minerals will try and up the price by revealing several deals designed to get the Minmetals offer higher.
The offer allows for a higher price if OZ manages to sell assets before the deal is done. Some assets such as Avebury in Tasmania, a nickel mine and the Martabe gold project in Indonesia, have been on the market. Now some buyers have appeared, but not for all.
They will feature in tomorrow's announcement, according to a source who writes: "Oz Minerals will announce on Friday the sale of two assets which will result in slight increase to current Minmetals takeover offer price: the Martabe gold project in Indonesia will be sold to Owen Hegarty-led consortium (Tiger) for $US 200 million."
"Evidence of reduced asset values in mining industry is the OZ nickel mine (on care and maintenance) at Avebury in Tasmania. The exclusive preferred bidder is (Hegarty associated) Range River Gold Ltd, as previously advised. The offer price of $US 80 million is a fraction of book value and as a consequence, the operation may be retained by Minmetals rather than sold."
"The Golden Grove mining operation in Western Australia will be sold to a consortium headed by Kerry Harminis, the former executive Chairman of Jubilee Mines Ltd, which was taken over by Xstrata at the top of the mining boom in late 2007. He wants to return to mining and is familiar with the project and has an affinity to the general area."
Thanks to Samizdat1 of Hot Copper
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