barrick offer c$8.15, page-29

trousergecko,

I agree with those points, but I might add that I think there are still several large copper mines that will come online over the next five years.

Here is a list of larger undeveloped copper and copper/gold deposits:

- Oyu Tolgoi with Rio and Ivanhoe
- Tenke Fungurame with Freeport and Lundin
- Frieda River with Highlands Pacific
- Wafi with Newcrest and Harmony
- Panguna with Bougainville
- Tampakan with Xstrata and Indophil

These are just the ones that come to mind. These are not elephant deposits as such but are all significant large scale deposits that could add between 200 and 300k tonnes of copper per year for at least 20 years mine life give or take.

Personally I think RIO will be busy bedding down Riversdale, putting Oyu Tolgoi into production and trying to sort out Extract and possibly Bougainville.

I also think Xstrata have a good deal on their plate for copper with Tampakan development.

The thing is now that we have a 7.7 billion dollar bid to beat that the potential bidder is going to need to bid at least 10% above that price.

I am not so sure many other companies have a spare 8.5 billion dollars sitting around ready to buy a copper project at what could be perceived as close to the top of the market.

I actually think the bull run has some legs left and will continue over the next few years. But I doubt there is going to be another bidder who will come in and beat what has been put forward by Barrick.

Even the Chinese have backed down, which was widely touted as having exceptionally deep pockets and no-one would want to get in a bidding war with them.

As much as I would like to see another bidder emerging I cannot think of any company that has those kind of dollars that does not already have a large scale copper deposit in development already.