"the sp was manipulated down to the current level.

This deal may or may not be good for Noront in the long run, but I am very disappointed in the BOD, that they could not achieve a better price. Huge dilution for current shareholders.

I wonder if there are any behind the scenes deals along with this???"

Sounds like you've got it. This is by no means a nice deal. It looks just like the other "stealth" deals where a cheap buy-in was followed up by a cheap takeover. Sizeable dilution for pennies really where they can easily gobble up to 20% with who knows what other entities to facilitate the big nasty. Shareholders should not be impressed by this. I smell a smokey room full of greed and self interest.

This is totally hypothetical folks but imagine a big company that would normally have to put out billions to pick up a junior with a big resource, who instead decides to pay out millions to....let say...not all of the shareholders.

Just think of the Vanadium that NOT is sitting on and all of the media hype on that because of the energy storage capability. We're talking future serious need here....but just like our famous gold find that disappeared without substantial explanation, I wonder if the rest of NOTs finds will be kept in the cooler 'til well after the deals are all done. NOT could have made significant gains to the SP by chasing Vanadium and any PPs would have come much higher such that they could have chased both Ni and V. Just my opinion and only that.