Australian coal miner TerraCom Ltd (TER.AX) offered to buy the remaining shares of Universal Coal PLC (UNV.AX) that it does not already own, in a deal that values the company at about A$175 million ($119.68 million).
Under the cash-and-stock deal, a Universal shareholder will get 10 cents in cash and about 0.6026 new TerraCom shares for each Universal share held.
The offer values each Universal share at 33.5 cents, a premium of 42.6% to Friday’s close.
TerraCom’s primary operating mine – Blair Athol – is in Queensland, while Universal’s top operations are in South Africa.
The deal comes at a time when Australia faces global ire for its policy of using old carbon credits to count toward future emission targets, which also emerged as a major sticking point in a U.N. climate summit in December.
Australia, which relies on coal-fired power making it one of the world’s largest carbon emitters per capita, approved a huge new coal mine by India’s Adani Enterprises (ADEL.NS) last year.
