I agree it does sound a lot, but i'll reserve judgement until we...

I agree it does sound a lot, but i'll reserve judgement until we see the financial justification for the acquisition.
I think reserves are around 13 years, but not sure about other synergies which can be derived from our ground around the area. That could be the upside for us.
I don't think the potential debt syndicates will have a large problem with stomaching $300m debt for such a long mine life though.

Synergies is likely to become the word of the week for AIS.

Having said that it does look like the AFR article was a planned "leak" insofar as they only had respond to the media article that a transaction was in progress, rather than having to announce it with full financial justification for shareholders (a clayton's announcement), IMO.

HB