potential suitors, page-3

An alternative Australian suitor is not immediately obvious.

The deposit would not be large enough to be materially significant for BHP or RIO. Of the mid tier producers ZFX and OXR are the two obvious ones. Owen Hegarty at OXR has recently signalled a focus on zinc to expand as he believes it is currently undervalued. On that basis I would be guessing he's not thinking nickel.

What about peer companies? For example would a company like SMY be interested in acquiring for the purposes of extending their resource base - they could park it for a time. Wouldn't be able to match the ZFX cash bid but a merger of equals might be a possibility. The risk there is in overcapitalising.

For a bit of a left field perhaps a group like the McNeils of FNT and MMN 'fame' might be interested in a play that could potentially yield cash to fund their exploration efforts. They are Tasmanians with an aggressive history. It would be hard to see how they could raise sufficient capital to fight back ZFX though.

Foreign companies face foreign investment review of course although selling AGM offshore would be unlikely to be blocked as it wouldn't be considered a threat to the national interest. I can't see Jinchuan making a move. As Daveo says they aren't in the business of mining and I think that putting in another $800 million plus of capital would be unlikely to be appealing to them.

I'll be interested to see other thoughts.