Cardinal gold takeover wrapping up as directors accept offer

After nearly 10 months, the drawn-out takeover battle for Cardinal Resources (ASX:CDV) looks to finally be coming to a close with all directors in the company accepting Shandong Gold’s offer.

Earlier this month, the company’s board had recommended that shareholders accept the offer of $1.075 per CDV share after the Chinese state-owned company received acceptances representing over 68 per cent of the company’s total shareholding.

Other potential suitors such as London-based Nordgold, backed by Russian steel billionaire Alexey Mordashov, have already pulled out of the running.

The takeover saga has been running since March last year when Nordgold acquired a 19.9 per cent stake in the company and made an informal offer to acquire the remaining shares for 45.775 cents per share.

Shandong ramped up the stakes in June with a 60c takeover offer, sparking off a flurry of ever increasing bids.

The fun escalated after Ghana’s Engineers & Planners Company Ltd (E&P) put in a $1.05 per share offer in November though Nordgold was quick to claim that this was ineligible due to a lack of written terms.

A fourth offer of $1.20 per share by Dongshan Investments emerged on Christmas eve though this came in just a little too late.

Gold bid winners

The end result though is the same.

With Shandong’s offer, Cardinal’s shareholders are winners given that the final bid is more than 200 per cent higher than its shares were worth at the beginning of 2020.

Additionally, Shandong may be a paying a lot more than it originally expected for the Cardinal takeover, but the prize is a suite of highly prospective gold assets in Ghana.

This includes the Namdini gold project where a feasibility study has already outlined a 5.1 million ounce reserve.

Namdini’s mining licence has also received official Sovereign Parliamentary Ratification in Ghana, which places it in a solid position for development.