Speculation has been rife that AngloGold, the world’s largest gold mining house, had set its sights on Normandy.

Normandy's stock fell 2c to 95c on the news, with a high trading volume of 4.9 million shares.

“There’ll be no takeovers in Australia,” Nigel Unwin, managing director of AngloGold’s Australasian operations, said at the annual Diggers and Dealers conference in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.

The company said it preferred to expand Sunrise Dam, which it acquired through Acacia Resources last year. It earlier said that it plans to make Sunrise Dam into a ‘super pit’ producing 2.3 million ounces a year over the next two to three years.

However, Unwin was more relaxed on joint ventures, adding that the global mining industry was destined to consolidate.

Australian mining companies are considered by some foreign producers to be cheap at the moment due to the weakness of the Australian dollar against other currencies, particularly the US dollar.

Unwin considered Australian stocks to be 25-30% cheaper than the US equivalents.