New offer upsets junior multi-merger.
It seems some Temex shareholders were near prescient in spurning Oban Mining. As noted in these pages, back in early June Oban Mining – a vehicle backed by some heavy hitters on the Canadian mining scene – made waves with a rather rare kind of offer: a merger with four other junior exploration companies with cash and/or exploration assets.
The deal involved arrangements with Eagle Hill Exploration, Temex Resources, Ryan Gold and Corona Gold. The former two have smallish, but high-grade gold resources, while the latter two mostly have cash.
In this, there was strong support in favour of the Oban proposition by Eagle Hill, Ryan Gold and Corona shareholders with lock-up share agreements covering 57%, 29% and 45% of their respective share counts.
But Temex was another case. As one analyst noted on a conference call around the time of the deal’s announcement last month, only 1% of Temex shareholders agreed to lockup in the Oban deal. Pitiful, really. Indeed, one disgruntled shareholder noted on that same call that the premium Temex would get in the deal (via shares in Oban) was less than the other juniors were getting.
They stand to get it now – or better in more ways than one. On Thursday Lake Shore Gold entered the fray with a superior bid for Temex. The Temex board determined Lake Shore’s (LSG) bid better, noting that it values Temex, in LSG shares, at C$0.13, versus the C$0.11 on offer from the less liquid Oban.
Now Oban has ten days to decide if it wants to match or better Lake Shore to try to keep a hold on Temex. It could be difficult to do.
In the first, Temex is Lake Shore Gold’s neighbour in a prolific gold camp in Canada on the Porcupine-Destor Fault through its 60%-owned Whitney gold project, which contains some modest-sized gold resources.
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