We broke the news post-close yesterday evening. In early trading today Friday (time of this post) LSG is up 6.2% (on a modest down day for gold stocks) and TAHO is down 6.3% (much heavier than the average in the sector), both on heavy early volumes.
Probably just coincidence, innit Kev?
I’ve been asked by several people as to the veracity of the information. It’s 100% solid, take it to the bank.
Most interesting to note how Scotia was so keen to talk up TAHO on Wednesday Feb 3rd in its daily ‘Mining Scoop’ mailer and highlighting its M&A ambitions (though stressing they didn’t want to pay too much), the day after the big pow-wow meeting between TAHO and LSG at the LSG head offices, but nothing at all about the news of the late-stage talks between TAHO and LSG in today’s mailer. As a matter of fact, Tanya Jakusconek is the senior precious metals analyst at Scotia. She’s also on the board of directors at Tahoe Resources. Funny dat, innit Kev?
UPDATE 11:30am: LSG now 10% up on 7.2m shares traded in Canada alone. The record one day volume there is 10m. EDIT: In fact with four hours left in the trading day LSG has just beaten its best volume day ever, above 10m shares traded and no signs of stopping. And 11% up. Meanwhile Kevin “loose lips” MacArthur’s TAHO is still 5% down. He Kevin, you know that 20% premium to market you wanted to offer? There’s only four of it left due to your pisspoor corporate governance, man. You know where the buck stops, don’t you? I’m telling you Kev, you should have done the right thing and told the world about that worker death in Guatemala instead of trying to hide it away from people. Karma’s a bitch, eh Kev?
UPDATE 2, just after 3pm local time: As expected LSG issues one of those denials-that-isn’t-a-denial. The eagle-eyed among you will notice the use of the word “material” in para 2…
“The Company is not aware of any material, undisclosed corporate
developments that would account for recent trading in its stock.”
…which is the legal cop-out, because negotiations of this sort are never material until the deal is agreed.
All good fun.