this is what i sent to the mining reporters at the globe and northern miner. i forgot to include the link to otto's article (it's too early here on the west coast) but i'm sure others will do so and i was too busy ranting to remember.

Dear Sir:

I am writing to you about the proposed buyout of Aurelian Resources by Kinross Gold Corporation. The deal involves Kinross shares and warrants worth $8.20. But the 60% premium over the market price of this supposedly generous offer is actually far below the stock's 52-week high.

The timing of this takeover is bizarre. The price of gold has been stuck in its usual summer doldrums, and is about to enter a more favorable seasonal period. Ecuador's infamous Mining Mandate is about to be lifted. The country's new mining law has been on President Correa's desk since June 27, and could be released at any time, removing the geopolitical risk from the investment community. The company has accumulated drill results from dozens of holes, which it has not yet released - at least not to us, but you can bet the management of Kinross has seen them.

Aurelian Resources has already defined 13.7 million ounces of gold on its first pass, and has substantially enough drilling results to produce a new, and considerably higher resource estimate. An analyst at Haywood Resources, who was no friend of Aurelian, estimated the deposit would total 20 million gold-equivalent resource ounces, which would make this deal worth only $60/ounce.

By comparison, Goldcorp just offered $140/ounce to Gold Eagle Mines for a smaller, lower-grade deposit.

This deal also provides no value at all for a district-sized land package (95,000 hectares) in an unexplored country with the same geology as Peru. Aurelian has dozens of gold and copper targets in what could eventually become a mining camp, that it has just given away.

Could there be a worse time to sell this company?

I don't know if there is collusion between the managements of Kinross Gold and Aurelian Resources. But what I DO know is that Patrick Anderson and the Aurelian Board of Directors have failed miserably in their fiduciary duty to protect the interests of their shareholders. The officers of the company received an additional two years of compensation, and the shareholders received a woefully insufficent offer for their shares, which the Board of Directors unanimously endorsed.

In addition, there was a virtual giveaway to Kinross of 15 million shares (at $4.75/share) which serves no purpose other than to stack the deck in favor of Kinross against any competing bid. The stench from this shady deal has already attracted the attention of the OSC, which has selected Aurelian for a formal review.

This is a great deal for Kinross, and the officers of Aurelian. But for the rest of Aurelian's shareholders, this is the heist of the century.