Sieg,

Barrick is the largest gold producer, but in terms of market cap its #1 title has been displaced by Goldcorp which seems to have a lot more fire power to take over other companies (a recent case is PRB). Hence Market Cap, along with debt load and cash in the war chest, would be better parameters for determining the "ranking" rather than the revenues (profits may be a better parameter).

In addition, potential suitors should be in a similar kind of business. For the case of ZEN potential suitors should be in mining and/or marketing of industrial minerals. In my opinion, gold producers such as AB or G would not want to get in the graphite business.

There is a possibility that an end-user such as Tesla may team up with a senior miner to take over ZEN to bring the Albany deposit into production. It would take a different team with mining experience to built a mine. Note: Tesla is not a miner and may not want to become one.

goldhunter