ESL, I don't know if it could have been structured without tax consequences or not, but judging from the tome I received explaining the merger, the company had excellent legal representation. Given that, I would suggest that if there had been a choice, it would have been thoroughly explained to the company. And, based on that, I would confidently conclude that it was the company that made the informed choice, not the lawyers.

Spoken like a lawyer...

For consideration: if you think the price of ECU will rise before the merger date, you sell ECU now, thus taking less of a gain than you would at the merger date (assuming you were correct that the stock was going to rise), and immediately buy AUMN, which is trading right about the 1:20 ratio.

Disclosure: Know next to nothing about tax law, know all there is to know about lawyers.