Overwhelming approval of Placer-Dome merger

Placer Dome Inc, is a now a reality, and becomes North America’s biggest gold producer. Shareholders at Aug 12 meetings in Toronto and Vancouver gave overwhelming assent to the merger of Placer Development, Dome Mines, and Campbell Red Lake Mines, creating a new company (Placer Dome) with assets of over $5 billion capable of producing over one million oz gold per year by the end of this decade.

Trading in the new company began the next day on the New York and Toronto exchanges, John Hick, now senior vice-president corporate for Placer Dome, told The Northern Miner. Shares will be listed on other major Canadian and world-wide exchanges.

At the Toronto meeting of Dome Mines more than 47 million of the over 50 million votes cast favored the amalgamation, and this success pattern was pretty much repeated at both the Campbell Red Lake and Placer meetings, Mr Hick said.

In fact, when pressed from the floor, Dome Chairman Fraser Fell (who will be chairman of Placer Dome), said he was aware of only two Dome shareholders, representing about 1,200 shares, who had previously expressed dissent.

Earlier, a threat to the amalgamation plan had been fended off when Dome Petroleum turned down a $499-million offer from Giant Yellowknife Mines, for a control block of Dome Mines (20.9 million shares) held by Dome Petroleum. Giant is a subsidiary of Pamour Inc., which in turn is controlled by Giant Resources of Australia.

Giant Yellowknife had said that if its offer were successful, it would vote against the Placer-Dome merger.

At the well-attended Dome Mines meeting, corporate gadfly Lewis Gilbert, expected by some to have registered objections to the merger, declared himself in favor of it and asked only such questions as the location of future annual meetings. Those, Mr Fell replied, will likely be rotated.

Exchange rates for shares in the merger are one Placer Dome share for each Placer share, 0.851 Placer Dome shares for each Dome Mines share, and 1.702 Placer Dome shares for each Campbell Red Lake share.

President and chief executive officer of the new company will be John Walton, with Anthony Petrina and Henry Brehaut senior vice-presidents of operations for Placer and Dome-Campbell divisions respectively, and John Racich, senior vice-president and chief financial officer.

Also now in the senior executive ranks at the new company is Lawrie Reinerston, who has been appointed senior vice-president exploration. Mr Reinerston comes from Noranda Inc., where he was most recently exploration manager for western North America.

He told The Northern Miner he would be based in Vancouver.