PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) has given approval to Shandong Gold Mining to acquire ASX- and TSX-listed Cardinal Resources.
Shandong in July this year increased its takeover offer for Cardinal from the 60c a share offered in June this year, to 70c a share, after a competing bid from shareholder Nordgold emerged, which offered Cardinal shareholders 66c in cash for each of their shares held.
The board of Cardinal has maintained its backing of the Shandong offer, which valued Cardinal at around A$395-million on a fully diluted basis.
With the FIRB approval now in place, the Shandong offer still remained subject to a 50.1% minimum acceptance condition.
Cardinal holds an interest in a number of tenements within Ghana, and is currently focused on the development of its Namdini project, which has an ore reserve of about 5.1-million ounces.
A feasibility study into the project estimated that it would produce 4.2-million ounces of gold over a mine life of 15 years, with an estimated 1.1-million ounces expected over the first three years of the operation. Namdini is expected to cost $390-million to develop.