Rio Tinto is unlikely to walk away from a bidding war for uranium developer Hathor Exploration, investors said on Tuesday, after rival bidder Cameco Corp trumped the global miner with a C$625 million ($615 million) offer. Cameco, Canada's largest uranium miner, raised its offer for Hathor by 20 percent to C$4.50 a share, topping a friendly bid from Rio Tinto at C$4.15.Given that Rio Tinto had been in talks with Hathor since early 2010, investors expect Rio Tinto is eager to take over the company and would have a bit more up its sleeve to top Cameco, especially since the target is not large."It wouldn't be out of character for them to come up with a higher bid. In the scheme of Rio, we're not talking about a lot of money," said Peter Chilton, an analyst at Constellation Capital Management, which owns Rio Tinto shares.Rio Tinto failed to comment on the latest bid by Cameco.
Cameco Corporation (Cameco) is a uranium producer and a provider of processing services required to produce fuel for nuclear power plants. Shares of CCJ traded higher by 0.1% or $0.02/share to $19.82. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $16.68 and as high as $44.81. On average, 2451580 shares of CCJ exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 2314967.
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