Billion-dollar Silver Lake-Red 5 merger agreement signed with Corrs' help

Corrs Chambers Westgarth has guided Silver Lake Resources (Silver Lake) on a $2.2bn proposed “merger of equals” with Red 5 Limited.

The two companies entered into a scheme implementation deed; under this agreement, the merger will take place via a Silver Lake scheme of arrangement. The ownership of the combined entity will be split as follows: Red 5 gets 51.7%, while Silver Lake gets 48.3%.

The merger will birth the fifth-largest gold producer on the ASX. Leadership of the merged company will be shared between current Red 5 chair Russell Clark and Silver Lake CEO and managing director Luke Tonkin.

The board of the merged entity will be composed of four directors from each of the present Red 5 and Silver Lake boards.

“The transaction is a great example of two complementary gold producers working together to create additional value for both sets of shareholders”, Corrs lead partner Russell Philip said.

Philip led a multidisciplinary team that advised on all aspects of the transaction, drawing on expertise from the corporate, energy and natural resources, banking and finance, employment, and property practices. Partners Peter Jarosek, Simon Reid, Giacomo Giorgi and Rebecca Field were part of the team working on the transaction.