Centamin Egypt, Egypt's major gold producer offered a 'fair valuation' for Sheba, which owns several concessions in the resource-rich northern Ethiopia.
Centamin Egypt announced that it offered a recommended 12 million dollars for a small gold exploration company operating in Ethiopia, thereby expanding its reach outside of Egypt.
Sheba is quoted on the UK's PLUS market. It owns and operates three gold and base metal exploration licences in northern Ethiopia that lie within the resource-rich Arabian Nubian Shield, also host to Centamin's flagship Sukari gold project.Josef El-Raghy, chairman of Centamin, said today that the strategic acquisition of Sheba marked the broadening of Centamin's asset portfolio beyond Sukari, as well as heralding its entry into Ethiopia, which he described as a highly prospective gold district where he believes the Sheba licences represent some of the most prospective in Ethiopia.
Centamin's cash and share offer is a 124 percent premium to Sheba's closing share price on Friday.
Sheba said that the offer represented a fair valuation and recognised that a company of its size would struggle to raise the significant increase in expenditure required to fully develop and exploit the licences.
Source: Reuters
