Inmet bids $321M for Petaquilla
Three-month TSX tradig in Petaquilla Copper
The stock price of junior miner Petaquilla Copper Ltd. doubled Monday in the wake of a $2-a-share takeover offer from Inmet Mining Corp.
Shares of Vancouver-based Petaquilla closed up 98 cents to $1.94 on the TSX. The stock has traded between 83 cents and $3.70 in the past year.
Based on just over 160 million shares outstanding, the cash bid is valued at $321 million.
Petaquilla, headquartered in Vancouver, is developing a copper deposit in Panama that the company website says could hold 9.4 billion pounds of copper, as well as large reserves of gold, silver and molybdenum.
The property is in dispute; Toronto-based Inmet has 48 per cent, with the rest held by Petaquilla. But Canadian mining heavyweight Teck Cominco Ltd. has an option to acquire half Petaquilla's stake.
On April 28, Petaquilla began an arbitration to get Teck out of the deal, claiming that Teck had not fulfilled the preconditions to exercise its option.
Inmet said in a news release late Sunday that it had a commitment from some institutional shareholders to tender their stock — 15.1 million Petaquilla shares, or 9.4 per cent of the total — to the bid.
Inmet said it will ask Petaquilla for a shareholder list "and intends to file and mail the takeover bid documents as soon as possible" after it gets the list.
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