bloomberg article announcing the take overhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-12/billionaire-prokhorov-s-intergeo-mmc-acquires-mercator.html
Billionaire Prokhorov’s Intergeo MMC Acquires Mercator
Intergeo MMC Ltd., a mining company controlled by Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim Group, agreed to acquire Vancouver-based copper producer Mercator Minerals Ltd. (ML) to gain a listing in Canada.
Mercator will be renamed Intergeo Mining Ltd., with Intergeo shareholders owning about 85 percent and Mercator investors about 15 percent, Onexim said today in an e-mailed statement, without disclosing financial terms. The deal is conditional upon Mercator’s continued listing in Toronto.
Intergeo will benefit from “access to public capital markets to develop its attractive projects,” Onexim said, citing Ak-Sug, a copper-porphyry deposit in Russia’s Tyva region. The venture is among its largest, with about 1.8 million metric tons of copper resources, company data show.
The transaction also gives Intergeo access to Mercator’s Mineral Park mine in Arizona, which produces copper, molybdenum and silver, as well as two projects in Mexico: El Pilar and El Creston. Mercator, whose shares have plunged 91 percent this year as the company struggled to repay debt, said Sept. 30 it hired BMO Capital Markets to advise on a potential sale or merger. Its market value was about $13.4 million yesterday.
Intergeo was planning an initial public offering in Canada in 2012. It postponed the sale, citing an unfavorable market.
To contact the reporters on this story: Yuliya Fedorinova in Moscow atyfedorinova@bloomberg.net; Liezel Hill in Toronto at lhill30@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Viljoen at jviljoen@bloomberg.net