WInspear Diamonds Inc. Targeted by De Beers

On June 26, 2000, De Beers Centenary AG and its wholly-owned subsidiary De Beers Canada Holdings Ltd. (De Beers) announced an unsolicited takeover bid to acquire common shares of Winspear Diamonds Inc. (Winspear) at a price of $4.25 per share. De Beers and Winspear subsequently announced on August 14, 2000 that they had entered into an agreement for De Beers to offer to purchase the outstanding common shares at an increased offer price of $5.00 per share, for an aggregate value of approximately $306 million. On September 8, 2000, De Beers announced that it had acquired more than 96 per cent of the outstanding shares of Winspear pursuant to the revised offer.

Winspear shares are listed on The Toronto Stock Exchange. Winspear holds an uncontested 67.76 per cent interest in the Camsell Lake property in the Northwest Territories where it is the operator of the Snap Lake Diamond Project, an advanced exploration stage diamond project.

The deal was led on behalf of De Beers by Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP’s Toronto office’s John Hough and Robert Shirriff with the assistance of Connie Sugiyama, John FitzGerald, Tony Baldanza, Doug New and Nigel Johnston. Additional support from the firm’s Vancouver office came from Peter Stafford, Lata Casciano, Melody Schalm and Geoff Cowper. Winspear was represented by the Vancouver office of Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP with a team led by Geoff Belsher with the assistance of Tamara Howarth. Additional assistance was provided by Peter Kalbfleisch, Joe Wood and Peter Juk (Vancouver Office), Pat Finnerty (Calgary Office) and David Jackson and Sheila Murray (Toronto Office).