B2Gold President Clive Johnson on $160M acquisition of Auryx Gold

B2Gold Corp TSX:BTO announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Auryx Gold Corp TSX:AYX at a purchase price of approximately
.88 per share of Auryx for a total equity value of $160 million. The merged companies will hold a 92% interest in Otjikoto gold project in Namibia as well as a 100% interest in two other Namibia projects.

B2Gold President/CEO Clive Johnson tells ResourceClips.com, “This is a friendly-merger deal—a plan of arrangement to combine the two companies. It’s valued at around $160 million in B2 shares. We’ve been aware of the Otjikoto project for a couple of years, and we thought it looked interesting. Our acquisition policy is to look for projects where we can come in and help a good technical group—which Auryx has—and bring our financial strength to bear on the project as well as our own exploration, mine-building and production experience. So we’ll be working with Auryx, and they’ll end up getting B2Gold shares.

Read and discuss the rest of this interview.