Lukas Lundin is nothing if not tenacious. The 59-year-old chairman of Lundin Mining Corp. is making yet another play for the prized Timok copper-gold deposit.
On Monday, Lundin Mining and Euro Sun Mining Inc. announced a C$1.5 billion ($1.2 billion) bid for Nevsun Resources Inc., which owns the project in eastern Serbia. While the proposal isn’t binding and was rejected by Nevsun’s board, it would be the industry’s biggest takeover this year.
In what Nevsun says is a “complicated” structure, the deal would give Euro Sun the Bisha mine in Eritrea and the company’s cash balance, while Lundin would get its European assets, including Timok.
Lundin made an unsuccessful attempt to acquire a stake in Timok in 2016. At that time, the project was majority owned by Freeport-McMoRan Inc., in partnership with Reservoir Minerals Inc. As Freeport shed assets to trim debt, it announced plans to sell part of its stake to Lundin.
However, that deal was thwarted when Reservoir exercised its right of first refusal. Reservoir acquired the Timok stake instead, with funding from Nevsun, as part of Nevsun’s takeover of Reservoir.
For the rest of this article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-07/lundin-mining-euro-sun-make-1-2-billion-bid-for-nevsun