http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...t/news-story/10b1b30aa38e265bc6134f0e710cfac4
Metals X chief executive Peter Cook is still seething over the company’s unsuccessful effort to acquire a stake in the Central Tanami gold mine, vowing to continue his pursuit of Tanami Gold through the courts.
Speaking to reporters at the Diggers and Dealers forum in Kalgoorlie, Mr Cook said he remained unhappy about Tanami’s decision to abandon an agreed deal with Metals X in favour of a higher-priced offer from Northern Star Resources.
“There is a counterclaim by Metals X against Tanami, a damages claim, and that’s in the courts, and daylight will be the disinfectant on that,” Mr Cook said.
Metals X, which has been buying up a suite of unloved gold assets in recent years, struck a deal in March to acquire up to a 75 per cent interest in the Central Tanami mine through a combination of cash, shares, and spending on the project.
But Northern Star trumped the offer less than three weeks later with an almost identically worded but higher-priced offer, prompting Metals X to threaten legal action against Tanami.
Mr Cook said Metals X and Tanami had deliberately excluded a clause that would allow Tanami to walk away if it received a better offer to ensure it would succeed.
“Agreements normally have the words ‘in the absence of a higher offer’ attached to them, unless you want them to be legally binding, and there’s typically a break fee in those,” he said.
“We agreed to leave it out because they didn’t want me to go away. They wanted to have Metals X on the hook.”
Mr Cook said the legal action was driven both as a matter of principle and by the quality of the asset in dispute.
Central Tanami has been on care and maintenance since 2010, when it was closed due to low gold prices, and debt issues within Tanami have limited efforts to restart operations.
“If anything got up my nose on the Tanami deal was that a very unusual structure to buy an asset was copycatted. It was almost word for word,” Mr Cook said.
Mr Cook said he “didn’t necessarily have a beef” with Northern Star over their conduct, and said he was comforted by the fact they were willing to pay “a hell of a lot more” for the asset Metals X was trying to buy.
The deal between Tanami and Northern Star completed on 31 July, with Tanami picking up $11 million in cash and just under 4.3m Northern Star shares.
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