They are drilling How many years has it been since we received news there are drill results pending on new targets on the JV?
Ya gotta like that.
Let's just hope Rio knows how to recover a fumbled takeover offer. What you do is start over, reconsider your price, sit down with Pentwater and have an honest chat about valuation, and the proper premium and upside to be left on the table for assuming all the downstream risk in exchange for a cash buyout. Pentwater and Sailingstone agree, you put out a new circular with a revised offer, Bob is your uncle,
Then to the relief of your Mongolian partners Rio sits down with ETG management and Horizon and hash out a price to buy out ETG, triple net of NPV of LIfts 1 and 2, some value for the rest of the JV and the 100% ground, etc.,. AND most importantly some consideration of the Mongolian demand, long deferred, that they will end up with a true 34% of the whole OT project. Which means somebody has to finance the obvious buyer, OTLLC, for the whole enchilada. But you can reward Rio with a shareholder loan to OTLLC with a preferable rate of interest, to saw off the cost - in fact, perhaps the $2.4 billion was a partial prepayment to Mongolia to allow some claw-back out of OTLLC ... that's how I would have played it.
And they all lived happily ever after, THE END.
cg