IAMGOLD or Kinross?

I've spent quite a bit of time lately sorting through a list of gold producers of relevant size to identify white knight candidates for CMM. Based on a number of factors including valuation, cash costs, location of assets, growth strategy and available cash, I believe Kinross (KRG) and IAMGOLD (IMG) are the strongest candidates (there are other strong candidates… but these two are the strongest). I have contacted both companies regarding the wonderful opportunity to make a highly accretive acquisition. If any of you (including members of our committee) have contacts with upper level management of either of those companies, please feel free to get into contact with them to make a pitch as well.

I believe CMM is a particularly good fit for IMG. IMG’s mines are located in countries with relatively higher political risk, so buying CMM would help diversify their mine portfolio into more politically stable countries and attract greater investor interest. In the next year, IMG will be experiencing declining production (before their growth projects kick in during 2013); acquiring CMM would immediately help offset that decline. On a run-rate basis, IMG will have similar cash costs to CMM (~$550/oz). IMG trades at ~$7100/oz of 2011 production and ~$200/oz of reserves & resources. This compares to CMM which is trading at ~$2000/oz of 2011 production and ~$83/oz of reserves & resources; obviously this would be a highly accretive acquisition for IMG. Furthermore, IMG is flushed with cash having recently divested minority interest (18.9%) of a mine in Ghana for $667mm. The mine is expected to produce 181k oz of gold a year. IMG management would look really damn smart if they sold a minority stake in an African mine at a reasonable valuation and used part of that money to acquire an extremely undervalued mine located in Canada and Peru. And I didn’t even mention the fact that CMM has massive exploration upside.

Obviously, a well capitalize buyer like IMG would not be afraid of CMM’s past liquidity issues and would have no problems finding the right engineers to properly develop our Lamaque mine. It makes so much sense for IMG to acquire CMM that it shouldn’t even take much convincing. However, we do need to make sure that their management is aware of this incredible opportunity. NOTE: only contact their management if you know someone there and please don’t pester them with a million emails.

EDIT: I've deleted the posts in the comment section because they were off-topic.