Batero Gold's board approves shareholder rights plan

Batero Gold Corp.(CVE:BAT) said Thursday that its board has approved a shareholder rights plan agreement to protect the company from hostile takeover bids.

The rights plan will give shareholders enough time to properly assess a take over bid, and will give the company's board the option to explore alternative transactions, if applicable.

If a takeover offer does not meet the "permitted bid" requirements as defined by the shareholder rights plan, shareholders will be able to buy additional common shares of Batero at a significant discount to the market price at the time.

A permitted bid must be made by way of a take-over bid circular prepared in compliance with applicable securities laws and, in addition to certain other conditions, must remain open for 60 days.

The company said the shareholder rights plan, which is subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange, was not adopted in response to any formal offer to acquire Batero.
             
The plan, which will have a term of three years, will be presented to shareholders to be ratified at the company's annual meeting, to be held no later than December 31.

In April, Batero closed an oversubscribed special warrant financing co-led by Raymond James and Cormark Securities. The company said it also completed a non-brokered special warrant financing on the same terms as the brokered financing.
Batero issued a total of 9.7 million special warrants at a price of 65 Canadian cents each, for total proceeds of $6.3 million.
The company's flagship project is the Batero-Quinchia property in Colombia.
As part of its planned 2012 work program to evaluate the potential of a high grade development option at the La Cumbre porphyry deposit in the southern area of the mineral resources at the project, the company said it will look to improve project economics through low cost heap leach mineral processing.
The company is also advancing metallurgical test work and deposit modeling to increase oxide resources, gold grade and recovery.
Within the technical report filed earlier in March, it showed zones of higher grade oxide resources, grading more than 1 gram per tonne (g/t) gold near surface at La Cumbre and at 11.42 g/t gold over 5.8 metres adjacent to the deposit, remain open to delineate.