Analysts wonder if Newmont’s $17-billion bid for Newcrest will create a company too large for its own good
Newmont Mining Corp.’s US$17-billion bid for Australia’s Newcrest Mining Ltd. would be the largest merger in the history of the gold mining sector, so Newmont chief executive Tom Palmer’s splash over the weekend naturally has prompted lots of questions.
But one simple query kept coming up as analysts studied the proposal. Why? Specifically, is Newmount, already the world’s largest gold miner, seeking to get bigger merely for the sake of increasing scale?
Absorbing Newcrest, the fourth largest gold miner, will be a challenge. Some analysts struggled to identify obvious synergies or strong regional overlaps that would help rationalize creating a US$57 billion gold mining giant.
Those analysts wondered if Palmer was attempting to create a firm that would be too large for its own good.
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