VANCOUVER – Gold Fields said late on Sunday that it had made three successive takeover proposals jointly with Silver Standard Resources Inc for Canadian miner Kirkland Lake Gold, confirming a Reuters report on Friday.
At Monday's open, Kirkland Lake's shares, which had been halted for much of the session on Friday, jumped 5% to C$8.45. That was against the trend of other gold stocks, which were weaker due to a lower gold price.
Reuters reported that South Africa-based Gold Fields and Canadian miner Silver Standard had made the joint, unsolicited bids for Kirkland and recently sweetened their offer to about C$1.4-billion.
Kirkland Lake is a mid-sized producer operating four goldmines and two mills in a bullion-rich belt of northeastern Ontario.
Kirkland on Friday said that after advice from its legal advisers and three separate financial advisers, it concluded the proposal was "not financially superior" to its own plan to acquire Newmarket Gold for about C$1-billion in stock.
Newmarket Gold's shares were down 2% at C$3.29 on Monday.
Kirkland also "strongly recommended" that shareholders vote in favour of the Newmarket deal. Investor advisory firms ISS and Glass Lewis have recommended to shareholders of Kirkland Lake and Newmarket that they vote for the deal.
The latest Gold Fields-Silver Standard offer for Kirkland Lake represented a premium of more than 50% of Kirkland's value on Thursday. Its shares jumped as much as 8% on Friday, after the Reuters report, to hit C$8.17 before being halted on the Toronto Stock Exchange. 