Equinox Minerals (EQN.AX) has offered to buy Lundin Mining (LUN.TO) for C$4.8 billion ($5 billion) to expand its African copper assets, a move that could trigger a bidding war with Inmet Mining.Equinox owns Africa's third-biggest copper mine by production, the Lumwana facility in Zambia, Thomson Reuters data shows. Lundin operates copper, zinc and nickel mines in Europe and has a 24.75 percent stake in Freeport McMoRan's (FCX.N) massive Tenke-Fungurume copper-cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo.The cash and stock bid comes about a month after Lundin and Inmet (IMN.TO) - a copper miner with operations in Spain, Turkey and Finland - agreed to join forces and form a Canadian copper mining major called Symterra, worth about C$9 billion ($9.2 billion).
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