Yamana's Offer For Meridian Gold Appears Inadequate (MDG, AUY, GLD)

Meridian Gold Inc. (NYSE:MDG) has announced that its Board of Directors unanimously recommends that shareholders reject the amended unsolicited offer by Yamana Gold Inc. (NYSE:AUY) and not tender any of their shares after it determined that the amended offer still fails to provide full value for Meridian Gold shares.

The company officer quotes signal an inadequate offer and that the company is continuing to execut on its own.  It also has received written opinions from each of its financial advisors, BMO Capital Markets and Goldman Sachs, that the consideration offered under the amended Yamana offer was inadequate.

Meridian Gold’s Board of Directors also reviewed its reasons for rejecting the original offer: the C$0.85 increase in the cash portion of the consideration represents only a 2.9% increase in the total consideration as of the announcement date of the amended offer; the cash has increased only from 10.9% to 13.4% of the total consideration as of the announcement date of the amended offer, and the offer still consists overwhelmingly of Yamana shares; if the Meridian shares had tracked the rise in the Philadelphia Gold & Silver Index (XAU) since Yamana’s original June 27 announcement, the amended offer would represent a one day premium of only 8.3%.

Meridian Gold is actually toward the lower-end of its 52-week trading range: Its Canadian ADR’s closed at $24.12 Friday in US trading and its range over the last year is $21.58 to $32.53.  It also has a $2.4 Billion market cap and trades more than 1 million shares per day on average.  The streetTRACKS Gold Shares (GLD) ETF that tracks gold ounces at 1/10 the price minus management fees, closed at $64.94 on Friday, and its 52-week trading range is $55.55 to $68.73.

Jon C. Ogg
August 20, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.