July 30 (Reuters) - Australian-Canadian miner OceanaGold Corp OGC.AX OGC.TO has agreed to buy Romarco Minerals Inc R.TO for around C$856 million ($657.20 million), getting its hands on a low-cost gold mine that is being built in a low-risk jurisdiction.
Romarco is building an open-pit gold mine at its Haile Gold project in South Carolina, which is expected to produce around 540,000 ounces of gold a year by 2017 at an all-in sustaining cost of less than $600 an ounce.
That compares to a gold price on Thursday of $1,093 an ounce.
The all-share deal, equal to 68 Canadian cents a Romarco share, is a 73 percent premium on Romarco's closing share price on Wednesday. OceanaGold shareholders will end up with 51 percent of the enlarged company, and Toronto-listed Romarco the rest.
OceanaGold brings to the deal free cash flow from its existing operations and access to lower-cost financing that will help to fund construction of the Haile mine at a time when mine financing is expensive due to weak metals prices.
The deal includes a C$34 million termination fee.
National Bank Financial acted as OceanaGold's financial advisor. RBC Capital Markets was Romarco's.
($1 = 1.3025 Canadian dollars)