Canada's Potash Corporation, the world's largest fertiliser producer, said today it had rejected an unsolicited bid from Australian mining giant BHP Billiton worth $38 billion.
The company said the BHP offer of $130 a share in cash, a 16% premium, was 'grossly inadequate' given Potash's prospects. Potash at the same time adopted measures designed to prevent a hostile takeover of the company.
The company chairman Dallas J Howe said shareholders needed to be 'aware of this aggressive attempt to acquire their company for significantly less than its intrinsic value,' describing the BHP offer as 'an opportunistic effort to transfer that value to its own shareholders.'
The company said its business held a 'premier position in a strategically vital industry'.
BHP Billiton, based in Australia, is the world's biggest miner, producing coal and iron for the global steel industry as well as a host of other metals and commodities along with oil and gas.
Its fortunes have been built on recent years on soaring demand from China's booming economy but it has huge interests worldwide.
