offer monday january 29 ..... wait for it, page-3

AFR thanx for asking...great question as only a true investor would ask.
OK lets get into it.
From what I can gather they have been in discussion since October 17.
In this announcement to the stock exchange dated December 6 they say "discussions are progressing well" even though "no formal proposal has been reached"

Please check it out for yourself.

http://sa.iguana2.com/cache/997d0f9476488cfde6536b2e8c69c317/ASX-CSM-344846.pdf

Ok so we know that discussions are going on. The company has come out and said that...that is the first thing.
Next we have a report from the West Australian on January 20 saying that

"The simmering speculation resurfaced yesterday with teh talk that an offer - either for the companyas a whole or it's big but inconsistent manganese division - could be unveiled after the Australia Day weekend on Jan 29 when CSM is due to release Decembers 1/4 report.

The other interesting thing is that the people CSM are in discussion with is some Russian Group headed up by Ian Gilbertson or something.
Do you remember him?
He was the CEO of BHP and he was the one who was given the boot by Don Argus for .... now get this... trying to takeover RIO!!!!!!
OK he's gone. Might have been a good idea in hindsight don't you think? LOL
Anyway this Gilbertson has resurfaced as a director or something in this Russian mining company ..SAUL or something.( please check back to the original West Australian article)
Now lets have look at CSM....this company is called Consolidated .... ok consolidated minerals. It is a diversified miner that had aspirations of becoming a mini RIO. That is how it was marketed. Ok so it has nickel, manganese, zinc. They say the Mindi Mindi ore resource is going to be a boutique iron ore producer.
The earnings forecast for this company is estimated to be 34 cents.
It's only worth 2.30 as we speak so that puts it on PE of about 7.
Hey this company is cheap and it is a diversified miner.
Gilbertson would have loved to have got RIO and now I would say he is doing the same thing but on a much smaller scale with this Russian company.
I don't think he wants just the manganese unit......he wants it all...nickle, zinc, iron ore.
He is out to prove a point to the blokes that sacked him at BHP
and it might be CSM that he is going to use.
CSM will be his platform for creating a bigger diversified miner.
in conclusion The discussion have going on since October. The guy they are doing discussions with is into diversified miners
So in answer to question....

Definately not 50/50. I am 80% sure that this announcement will be made on Monday.