Sibanye Gold Agrees to Buy Lonmin for GBP285 Million
December 14 2017 - 3:03AM
Dow Jones News
By Carlo Martuscelli
Sibanye Gold Ltd. (SGL.JO) said Thursday that it had reached an
agreement with Platinum-group metal producer Lonmin PLC (LMI.LN) to
acquire the company in a deal that values Lonmin at 285 million
pounds ($380.6 million).
Under the terms of the offer, each Lonmin shareholder will be
entitled to receive 0.967 new Sibanye shares for each Lonmin share,
Sibanye said.
Based on Sibanye's Dec. 13 closing price, the offer values each
Lonmin share at 86.3 pence, a 35% premium on Lonmin's Dec. 13
closing price of 63.8 pence per share, the company said.
Sibanye said that the deal--which follows the acquisition of
Aquarius Platinum and the Rustenburg Operations from Anglo American
Platinum--continues its strategy of expanding Platinum-group metal
holdings in South Africa.
"The contiguous nature of the Lonmin and Rustenburg Operations
enhances the scale of Sibanye-Stillwater's operations, providing
further opportunities to effectively allocate capital, improve
asset performance of the asset base and facilitate operational
flexibility," the company said.
With its ownership of a full-metal processing plant, complete
with smelting capabilities, the addition of Lonmin's assets
advances its capabilities to the point that it will be a fully
integrated precious-metal producer, Sibanye said.
The Sibanye board said that the deal will create synergies for
shareholders, and estimates a total pretax synergies of about 1.5
billion rand ($110.4 million) by 2021. The company added that the
creation of the synergies would have a one-off cost of ZAR80
million and would require laying off 800 people.
Write to Carlo Martuscelli at carlo.martuscelli@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 14, 2017 02:48 ET (07:48 GMT)
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