I did some research about the context in which the deal between Volta and B2B occured in order to see if Volta shareholders were, as some posters suggest, the losers of that deal.
First, let's just say that it's tough to get back into the context as it happened 10 years ago, but if we look at the markets during that time (easily verifiable), we can see that monthly Gold Price from January 2013 to 2015 went from $1670 to $1060 and was around $1300 during the time of the transaction.
For the same period, the monthly price for GDXJ went down from 81$ to 18$ clearly showing that there was a sell off for junior gold miners. The price was at 35-40$ at the time of the transaction. I think we can agree on the fact that the sector was not in a good cycle as sentiment was not at the best.
Kevin Bullock about the transaction with B2Gold:
"In a difficult market where financing of development stage gold companies has become increasingly challenging, we are very pleased to be partnering with an intermediate gold producer that has both the financial and technical capabilities to advance Kiaka for the benefit of Volta shareholders."
GDXJ went even down further to $17 in December 2015 so I think Volta management made a good move for shareholders as gold and gold miners went through pretty tough times in the 6 years folowing the transaction, during which gold price ranges from $1100 to $1350 (closing at 1060$). Moreover the project was not at Feasibility level. Volta would have needed to go through the FS process: it would have take Volta an equity financing in a difficult market and a lot of time to get the report out, meaning that they would have released it in a really bad market.
Results of the voting were in favor of the proposal at
99.36% (available at sedar.ca)
Item 1: Approval of the Arrangement By a vote by way of ballot, the special resolution contained in Appendix “B” to the management information circular of Volta dated November 15, 2013 approving the plan of arrangement under Section 182 of the Business Corporations Act (Ontario) whereby, among other things, holders of common shares of Volta (the “Volta Shares”) will receive, for each Volta Share that they hold, 0.15 of a B2Gold Corp. (“B2Gold”) common share, and B2Gold will acquire all of the issued and outstanding Volta Shares (the “Arrangement Resolution”), was carried. The results of the ballot vote were: Minority Approval By a vote by way of ballot, the Arrangement Resolution, excluding the votes cast by interested shareholders of Volta, was carried by a majority of the minority shareholders of Volta.
The results of the ballot vote were:
| Vote type | Number of Votes | Percentage of Votes |
| For | 93,042,626 | 99.36% |
| Against | 602,780 | 0.64% |
Let's just finish by saying management and directors had only 2% ownership so I guess that all other shareholders were really behind the merge with B2Gold.