SINGAPORE/SYDNEY (Reuters) - The giant Martabe gold mine on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has attracted several unsolicited enquiries from buyers, its majority owner EMR Capital said on Thursday.
Earlier this week, financial sources cited market talk that parties had made approaches to buy Martabe, which has a resource of 7.5 million ounces of gold and 67 million ounces of silver.
"As you would expect, we have received a number of unsolicited inbound enquiries about Martabe," said EMR, which has a 61.4 percent stake in the mine. "There is, however, no formal sale process ongoing," it wrote in an email to Reuters.
EMR did not provide any details on the mine's valuation, but a financial source has said it is at a big premium to the price Martabe was last acquired for.
Australia-based EMR spearheaded a consortium that bought 95 percent of the mine from Hong Kong's G-Resources <1051.HK> last year for $775 million, including assumed debt, plus $130 million if gold prices average $1,500 an ounce over a 12-month period before January 2019. Gold <XAU=> has not traded above $1500 an ounce since April 2013.
The other stakeholders in the mine are U.S. investment group Farallon Capital Management, with 20.6 percent, and Indonesian billionaires Martua Sitorus with 11 percent and the Hartono family with 7 percent.
(This story has been refiled to correct typo in headline)
(Reporting by Anshuman Daga in SINGAPORE and James Regan in SYDNEY, additional reporting by Eveline Danubrata in JAKARTA; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
