China $81 Billion Stimulus, page-3

There's been takeover talk around AGO for at least 3 years, when Anglo were said to be looking for iron ore assets in the Pilbara. This part of the cycle you are more likely to see consolidation amongst juniors rather than a big player coming in and taking someone out. Why ? Because the big players have conservative directors who are governed by "financials" and if the financials show a company is losing money they do not present as a good takeover target. Big companies do takeovers when times are good and generally pay way too much, small companies merge when times are bad. But the merger's don't consolidate deposits - they just add more dispersed, smaller assets to a merge.co.

BCI has suffered a huge fall in share price from $3.40 pre-ann to $2.08 today, mostly due to it proposed merger with IOH. Largely because there's no real gain to BCI, adding additional small, land-locked deposits. Same with AGO - a collection of small, medium grade deposits. (BCI+IOH+AGO+BCK) still lacks sufficient high grade to be competitive through a boom-bust cycle.