Very nice to see one of my long term golds doing so well today… looks like exciting times for AND Australia’s second largest by market cap gold company.

VANCOUVER, BC – Eldorado Gold Corporation (“Eldorado” the “Company” or “we”) today confirmed it has approached the Board of Directors of Andean Resources Limited (“Andean”) with a proposal to combine the two companies, thus creating the world’s fastest growing and lowest cost gold producer.
Andean is a dual listed company (TSX: AND) (ASX: AND) whose main asset is the Cerro Negro Gold Project (“Cerro Negro”) in the southern province of Santa Cruz in Argentina. Cerro Negro is an epithermal gold deposit at feasibility study stage that currently contains 2.1 million oz of gold and 20.6 million oz of silver in Probable Reserves.
The proposal put to the Andean Board was for a share exchange transaction at a fixed exchange ratio of 0.310 of an Eldorado common share for each Andean ordinary share, through a friendly transaction supported by a majority of the Andean Directors (the “Proposal”).

Eldorado believes that the Proposal is extremely compelling for all Andean shareholders and represents a fully valued offer for Andean. Based on the closing price of an Eldorado share on the Toronto Stock Exchange (“TSX”) on August 30th, 2010, the written Proposal, dated August 30th, 2010, followed an earlier initial approach to Andean on August 18th, 2010, and valued Andean at Cdn$6.36 per share, representing:

 A premium of 61.9% to the Andean 20 day volume weighted average price on the TSX to August 30th, 2010.
 A premium of 89.9% to the Andean recently completed equity financing, which was priced by the Board of Andean at Cdn$3.35 per share.

The Proposal would result in Andean shareholders owning approximately 24% of the combined company on a fully diluted basis, based on reported issued capital of each company as of August 30th, 2010.

You can see several posts re AND further down the page.