St. Eugene Mining Corp. said that private equity firm Churchill Natural Resources Partners had retreated from a potential bidding war with St. Eugene’s biggest share holder Claude Resources over the Tartan Lake gold mine.
The Tartan Lake gold mine was acquired by St Eugene in 2002 and had been mined between 1987 and 1989 for about 48,000 ounces of gold.
A week ago Churchill Natural Resources had made Canadian $4 million offer for the Canadian gold mining company’s Tartan Lake gold mine project located in Manitoba. The company’s special committee was reviewing the offer.
However Claude Resources which already owns 9.7% of the company made a Canadian $13.6 million offer for St Eugene which valued the shares of the company at 12.5 Canadian cents. This offer made Churchill terminate its own offer so as not to be part of a bidding war. Claude and St Eugene are 65-35 joint venture partners in the Amisk project.
The Chief Executive Officer of St. Eugene, Jennifer Boyle said that the next step for the company would be to determine what exactly Claude was interested in the whole company or just St. Eugene's 35 percent interest in its other key project, the Amisk gold project in Saskatchewan.
The Dallas-based private equity firm said in a news release that Churchill does not believe management of St Eugene is prepared to enter into serious discussions with Churchill at this time that are likely to result in a binding agreement.