Sibanye Gold Agrees to Buy Lonmin for GBP285 Million

By Carlo Martuscelli 
 

Sibanye Gold Ltd. (SGL.JO) said Thursday that it had reached an agreement with Platinum-group metal producer Lonmin PLC (LMI.LN) to acquire the company in a deal that values Lonmin at 285 million pounds ($380.6 million).

Under the terms of the offer, each Lonmin shareholder will be entitled to receive 0.967 new Sibanye shares for each Lonmin share, Sibanye said.

Based on Sibanye's Dec. 13 closing price, the offer values each Lonmin share at 86.3 pence, a 35% premium on Lonmin's Dec. 13 closing price of 63.8 pence per share, the company said.

Sibanye said that the deal--which follows the acquisition of Aquarius Platinum and the Rustenburg Operations from Anglo American Platinum--continues its strategy of expanding Platinum-group metal holdings in South Africa.

"The contiguous nature of the Lonmin and Rustenburg Operations enhances the scale of Sibanye-Stillwater's operations, providing further opportunities to effectively allocate capital, improve asset performance of the asset base and facilitate operational flexibility," the company said.

With its ownership of a full-metal processing plant, complete with smelting capabilities, the addition of Lonmin's assets advances its capabilities to the point that it will be a fully integrated precious-metal producer, Sibanye said.

The Sibanye board said that the deal will create synergies for shareholders, and estimates a total pretax synergies of about 1.5 billion rand ($110.4 million) by 2021. The company added that the creation of the synergies would have a one-off cost of ZAR80 million and would require laying off 800 people.

Write to Carlo Martuscelli at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 14, 2017 02:48 ET (07:48 GMT)

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