Randgold Resources and Canada's Barrick have agreed to merge in a deal that will create an 18.3 billion US dollar (£14 billion) gold mining giant.
According to the terms of the all-share deal, Barrick shareholders will own around 66.6% of the new combined firm, while Randgold shareholders will hold the remaining 33.4%.
The tie-up will create a mining titan that owns five of the world's top-ten tier one gold assets.
Randgold boss Mark Bristow, who will lead the New Barrick Group, said: "Our industry has been criticised for its short-term focus, undisciplined growth and poor returns on invested capital.
"The merged company will be very different.
"Its goal will be to deliver sector-leading returns, and in order to achieve this, we will need to take a very critical view of our asset base and how we run our business, and be prepared to make tough decisions.
"By employing a strategy similar to the one that proved very successful at Randgold, but on a larger scale, the New Barrick Group will leverage some of the world's best mines and talent to create real value for all stakeholders."
It will be "positioned for growth in many of the world's most prolific gold districts", the companies said on Monday.
The deal will see Randgold shareholders receive 6.1280 new Barrick shares for each share held.
The merged firm will have an aggregate market capitalisation of 18.3 billion US dollars.
Based on the 2017 financial results, together the companies would have made 9.7 US dollars in revenues and adjusted earnings of approximately 4.7 billion US dollars (£3.6 billion).
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here