Bringing a twist in a multi-week drama over Equinox Minerals, the Chinese miner, Minmetals Resources has decided to withdraw its $6.5bn offer, which was preceded by Barrick Gold agreeing C$7.3bn ($7.6bn) takeover bid for the copper miner.

Barrick is known to be the world’s largest gold producer and it offered C$8.15 a share against Minmetals’ C$7 offer which was later dismissed by the management as an opportunistic low-ball offer.

Andrew Michelmore, Chief Executive Officer of Minmetals Resources, said, “The price offered by Barrick is above our most optimistic assessment of value. Competing with Barrick at these prices would, in our view, be value destructive for [our] shareholders”.

Turning its attention to mining assets over the past decade, the state-owned Minmetals Group has been on the hunt for other metals assets after successfully acquiring most of the assets of Australia’s Oz Minerals for A$1.7bn in 2009.

Helen Lau, a Hong Kong-based analyst with UOB Kay Hian Ltd. suggested that Minmetals had wanted to diversify its nonferrous metal businesses by adding copper assets and it was really needed to do a lot of acquisitions in order to become a world class mining company.