RE: Nvidia results, valuation of 1 us chipmaker more than the whole of UK FTSE Co.s29 Aug 2025 21:54
@ GGPThruandtru
The privatisation of Shanta Gold was a controversial takeover (to put it mildly) by an insider (a non-executive director) and his associates/family.
The SPV used was Saturn Resources Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of ETC Holdings (Mauritius) Limited, a private conglomerate controlled by Ketan Patel, Birju Patel and Mahesh Patel, with Ketan Patel already a member of the Shanta board!
The takeover bid was at a negligible 6.72% premium to the then share price and was (in both my own and many other LT investors opinion) intentionally announced on 20 December 2023, immediately before the Christmas break when the City was almost completely closed down for a fortnight.
Shanta were also taken private just their Singida Mine was about to come on line and start producing some long awaited profits (with estimated initial production of 100,000oz pa) and with some drill results also having conveniently been left outstanding since the previous year.
The offer was rushed out without warning just before that Christmas as already stated, yet in presentations given by the CEO to shareholders in the prior few months he had been adamant that the company was not for sale. He had also previously announced his resignation yet did not actually resign.
The Board also appeared to be completely missing in action at the time of the 'offer', with CEO Eric Zurrin (who used to front up all the presentations and shareholder communications) entirely missing from the offer document. Apart from a short message of support, the entire document was fronted by Ketan Patel who, before then, was neither seen nor heard.
The offer document at the time also appeared to have been written by the 'Bidco team' and not Shanta’s Board and as such consistently downplayed the company’s future prospects. Interestingly too, media coverage at the time had described the company as ‘struggling’. (Sound familiar!?)
In effect, and in my own opinion, Ketan Patel (an insider) was given a remarkable six months to prepare an opportunistic low-ball bid. Also during this time Shanta did not appear to have actively sought any other suitors as well as intentionally not having taken some obvious steps that might have propelled the share price northwards (such as a delayed FS and long outstanding drill results).
Furthermore, the entire 'Voting' process was a complete and utter clusterf 8ck, with conflicting and contradictory information flying about all over the place (smoke and mirrors, just as they wanted it IMHO!) and unbelievably the last voting request was made with only a week’s notice and over the Easter bank holiday weekend when a lot of share holders would have been away on holiday!
(In fact the guy who I had been in contact with at the Takeover Panel to express my concerns during the run up to the 'vote' even had to contact their NOMAD to tell them to ''get their act together''!)
LTHs were robbed and I'm just praying that we don't see so
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