Carrie Tait, Financial Post

In a move that would drastically alter the domestic merger-and-acquisition landscape, the Toronto Stock Exchange is considering changes to Canada’s takeover rules to give shareholders of companies attempting to swallow other public companies the chance to vote on the deals.

The TSX is asking the market whether a shareholder-approval requirement should be implemented for deals in which the acquiring company must issue shares from its treasury, creating dilution, in order to buy another public company. The New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and London Stock Exchange — three of the world’s largest markets — already have shareholder-approval rules in place that are triggered when a certain level of dilution is hit.

“It would have a big impact on transaction structuring,” said Aaron Emes, a partner at Torys LLP in Toronto. “More cash, less shares, potentially favouring a private-equity player versus a strategic [buyer] who was planning on issuing shares as currency.” Read more

All the signs seem clear. The American greenback is in a state of freefall. Meanwhile, an alarming U.S. credit crunch has undermined investor confidence in the financial sector.

Nobody?s quite sure how far this crisis might extend. But many of the world?s best-informed commodities analysts concur that we?re witnessing unmistakable symptoms of a fiscal malaise that threatens to undermine the foundations of North American economies.

In short, there?s no better time to stake your claim to a safe, prosperous future by placing your confidence in gold, silver and uranium, investments for all time. They can?t be printed, manufactured or duplicated. And never forget: global demand for all three of these precious metals is so high that each is being consumed more rapidly than new sources can be mined.
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A decade after they toiled through the lean years, miners are the new rock stars of Canada’s industrial workforce.

Surging commodity prices, strong demand for metals from the growing Asian economies and an anticipated flood of retirements by experienced miners has ensured recruits get lots of lovin’ from admiring suitors.

Over the next 10 years, more than 90,000 vacancies are expected in Canada’s mining industry.

“Canada enjoys a reputation as a global mining powerhouse both in terms of what we produce but also our knowledge and expertise,” says Paul Hebert, executive director of the Mining Industry Human Resources Council.

“That means our people and our graduates are highly sought after and are very aggressively courted by employers from overseas.”
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Tombstone Exploration Corporation (OTCBB: TMBXF) is pleased to announce it has retained Francisco P. Montecinos as V.P. of Exploration. He will be on site daily supervising this extensive program and produce reports on the results of exploration on the Company’s project in Tombstone, Arizona.

“We are delighted to have retained Francisco as our V. P. of Exploration and look forward to working with him. His qualifications and experience will be an asset to Tombstone in its exploration efforts,” stated Alan M. Brown, Tombstone Exploration’s CEO.

Francisco has worked as an exploration geologist for over 40 years in some 20 countries including Chile, the United States, Mexico, Central and South America countries and few of the Caribbean island countries, as well. Of these, the last 25 years has been spent throughout North and Central America as project manager and regional exploration manager for a number of multinational mining companies including Glencairn Gold Corp., Montana Gold Corp., TVX and Intrepid Minerals Corp. in volcanic-hosted precious metals exploration. In addition, he has Read more

The strong gold price is underpinning a surge in activity in the global gold mining sector.

The precious metal hit $US800 an ounce on yesterday’s futures market, $75 dollars shy of the record set in 1980.

Analysts say inflation fears and the continuing weakness in the US dollar will drive the spot price to new highs.

It is encouraging mining giants like Newcrest to flag expansion plans and a number of producers are investigating acquisition opportunities around the globe.

Gold currently worth US$791 an ounce.

– ABC

The Canadian Press

David Aksawnee knows what another year of record spending for mineral exploration in the Eastern Arctic looks like.

“I see a lot of happy faces,” says the mayor of Baker Lake, Nunavut, the centre of several major exploration and development projects. “[People] are making an income now and supporting their families.”

This week, the government of Nunavut released figures suggesting the territory is heading for its eighth year of record spending on mineral exploration out of the past nine. A sector that injected about $26-million into the economy in 1999 is now expected to pump in nearly $230-million in 2007.

That’s nearly one-quarter of Nunavut’s entire GDP and a 17-per-cent climb from last year.
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Mumbai (PTI): The new mining policy, which is expected to open doors for more FDI in the mining sector, will be announced by December.

“I’m confident that the policy will come by December. The Group of Ministers (GoM) has already cleared the proposal. This will be forwarded to Parliament in the winter session,” Minister of State for Mines T Subbarami Reddy told reporters at a seminar here on Friday.

With the amendment, an investment of Rs 1,000,000 crore is expected to come into the mining industry in the next ten years, Reddy said.

The new policy is also likely to bring in less stringent norms for parties which opt for mining licenses, he said.

“Those who possess a prospective license will automatically get qualified for the mining licenses,” Reddy said.
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