China Minmetals has increased its bid for the assets of Australian Miner OZ Minerals 16% to US$1.39 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. While Minmetals’ existing bid had been endorsed by OZ’s board and was due to be approved by a shareholder vote on Thursday, the Chinese firm decided to up its offer to stave off potential competition from investment bank Macquarie Group. Earlier this week, Macquarie had tried to convince shareholders to reject Minmetals’ offer in favor of a US$1.1 billion recapitalization that would have been financed via a rights offering to existing OZ Minerals investors. OZ had also rejected a US$1.22 billion refinancing bid by RFC Corporate and RBC Capital Markets in favor of the Minmetals deal.
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