For Canadian mining companies, this has been a year for the record books. In January, Canada-based Lundin Mining Corporation and Inmet Mining Corporation announced that they were combining in a $9.1 billion merger of equals. A little over a month later, Australia’s Equinox Minerals Limited made a $5 billion hostile bid for Lundin, which complicated the Lundin-Inmet romance. And that wasn’t even the end of the action. Minmetals Resources Limited, a subsidiary of a state-owned Chinese mining company, made a $6.5 billion offer—the largest hostile bid ever from a Chinese-controlled mining company—for Equinox. Despite its unprecedented bid, Minmetals ultimately lost out when the world’s largest gold mining company, Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation, intervened. Three weeks after Minmetals announced its offer, Barrick swooped in with a surprise successful $7.68 billion white-knight bid for Equinox. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.)
Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt chair H.B. Clay Horner represented Canadian-listed Equinox through the blur of proposed transactions. “When you get to make a $5 billion hostile bid in a transaction, defend against a $6 billion hostile bid, and agree to a friendly $7 billion deal, that’s as good as it gets in a six-month period,” Horner says.
