Australia’s leading gold miner has knocked back a near $40 billion takeover approach from a South African rival, branding it an attempt to get its leading assets on the cheap.
Northern Star revealed on Monday it had received the unsolicited $38.7 billion offer from Gold Fields on September 14, before its board told the would-be suitor on Friday it wouldn’t be appropriate to engage further.
The owner of the famed gold super pit in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, which is also a major tourist attraction in the outback town, has suffered a series of operational setbacks in 2026.
The offer was “highly opportunistic” because it came ahead of several near-term value catalysts for the miner, including the ramp-up of a new processing plant at the super pit and the arrival of a new chief executive, Northern Star’s board said.
Gold Fields was asking Northern Star shareholders to accept nearly three-quarters of its massive offer in Gold Fields stock, which Northern Star said carried a “meaningfully higher jurisdictional risk profile”.
Johannesburg-based Gold Fields has assets across Australia, South Africa, Ghana, Peru, Chile and Canada.
Several of its operations in WA Australia’s Eastern Goldfields region are close to Northern Star’s super pit and Jundee gold mine.
Northern Star also owns the Pogo gold mine in Alaska and is developing the huge Hemi deposit it acquired during its $5 billion takeover of De Grey Mining last year.
“Gold Fields has sought to acquire one of the world’s premier gold portfolios at a price that falls well short of what the board considers to be its fundamental value and at a highly opportunistic time,” chairman Michael Chaney said on Monday.
However, the potential target’s share price has fallen significantly from its peak above $30 in March after a number of events.
It cut production forecasts, first in January and then in March, after equipment failures and maintenance bottlenecks at the pit.
It also faced productivity issues at its other WA assets.
Chief executive Stuart Tonkin stepped down at the end of August, and former Glencore executive Suresh Vadnagra will take over on October 5.
RBC Capital Markets analyst James Redfern said the Gold Fields offer implied a $27-per-share valuation for Northern Star, and a 22 per cent premium to its price at the time of the offer.
The miner’s share price rose 8.6 per cent to $24 before noon, possibly reflecting hopes that Gold Fields will return with a higher bid.
But even with Monday’s jump, Northern Star shares are still down 1.8 per cent since the start of the year.
Under its rejected offer, Gold Fields planned to pay each Northern Star shareholder $7.25 in cash and 0.3125 in Gold Fields scrip, which would have left them collectively owning about a third of a combined company.
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