central banks keeping gold in their vaults , page-6

Sarge,

While I agree that friendly merger of SLR and IGR would make for a great company, (Silver Lake Integrated?), I discussed this with CC in my meeting with him last month. In his own inscrutable way he sort of agreed there would be lots of synergies and would probably make a very good company. The problem arises when you have a friendly merger, there is no takeover premium. Each is appropriately valued, market cap/number of shares etc, and xxx shares in new company for each IGR and SLR shareholder. A "merger of equals, no premium", is the term he used. At that point, you put a value on IGR of xxx. A predator can then swoop in and say "Hey! I'll pay 10%, or 15% more for IGR, instead of the more normal 30% takeover premium. And the cat makes pigeon pie out of the deal.