Shareholders of Aluminium Corp. of China Ltd. have approved the company’s plan to buy a controlling stake in Mongolia-focused coal miner SouthGobi Resources Ltd. from Canadian miner Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. for more than 920 million U.S.dollars, the Chinese aluminum producer said Friday.
At Chalco’s annual general meeting Friday, 99.97% of its shareholders voted for the resolution to offer 65.97 Hong Kong dollars for each of SouthGobi’s shares, the company said in a statement. The offer price is more than double SouthGobi’s closing price of HK$29.00 Friday.
SouthGobi Resources Ltd. shares were taking a beating Tuesday morning after the company said uncertainty over Mongolia’s mining laws is stalling work at its flagship Ovoot Tolgoi Mine.
The miner said in a statement Tuesday that work at the mine would be “entirely curtailed” at the end of the second quarter, partially because it can’t get government permission to revise an environmental impact assessment for a dry coal handling facility, without which the company said it can’t process coal for transport to market. SouthGobi shares slid 5% in Hong Kong.
Even as Aluminium Corp. of China Ltd.’s, or Chalco’s, deal ambitions in Mongolia have stalled, it hasn’t stopped it from braving the stock market for capital.
As Dow Jones Newswires reports Friday, Chinalco Mining Corp., a unit of state-owned Chalco, is planning to raise up to $1 billion in an initial public offering in Hong Kong. Pre-marketing will begin Monday, and the company has received regulatory approval from the stock exchange.
Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd. isn’t letting its stalled takeover of SouthGobi Resources Ltd. stop its coal ambitions.
On Monday evening, the company, also known as Chalco, said it would buy a 29.9% interest in Hong Kong-listed Winsway Coking Coal Holdings Ltd. for HK$2.39 billion (US$307.9 billion), to become the companys’ single largest shareholder. The price, at HK$2.12 a share, is a 22.5% premium over Winsway’s closing price of HK$1.73 on Friday.
This post has been updated:
The wave of auditor resignations among Hong Kong-listed companies continues, but this time it’s not a little-known small-cap company that’s in question.
On Tuesday, Mongolia-focused miner SouthGobi Resources Ltd., which is also listed in Toronto, said Deloitte & Touch LLP has resigned as an auditor “on its own initiative” and that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP has replaced it. Deloitte resigned before its contract was up, said SouthGobi, but added that the auditor had not “expressed any reservations” in its most recent reports.
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