China didn't approve in time — and a $4 billion gold mining deal collapsed

Chinese miner Zijin's purchase of Canada's Allied Gold was supposed to close by July 29. The deadline expired without Chinese regulatory approval, leaving a $295 million minority stake in place of full control.

In January 2026, Chinese gold miner Zijin Gold agreed to buy 100% of Canada's Allied Gold for C$44 per share, a check worth roughly $4 billion. The deal already had a green light in Canada and other jurisdictions where the two companies operate. Only one approval was missing: that of Chinese regulators, responsible for authorizing Zijin's capital outflow for an overseas acquisition of this size. The original closing deadline, May 2026, was extended to July 29. On that day, both companies acknowledged there was no longer a realistic chance of unlocking approval within a foreseeable horizon and let the deadline lapse. Rather than walk away empty-handed, Zijin struck a parallel deal: buying 12.8 million newly issued Allied shares at C$32.55 each, a $295 million investment expected to close around August 10 that gives Zijin a 9.2% stake in the company, without control.

The case exposes a point that international M&A executives know but that only becomes visible when things go wrong: regulatory approval in a third country isn't a bureaucratic step, it's an execution risk carrying the same weight as any financial clause in the contract. Zijin and Allied did what mature cross-border M&A players increasingly do — they designed, from the start, a contractual plan B for the scenario where approval wouldn't come in time. That plan B wasn't negotiated in a rush after the failure: the minority-investment structure was, in practice, already built and ready to trigger as soon as it became clear full control wouldn't clear the Chinese review. This changes how any mining deal negotiator should structure agreements that depend on approval in politically sensitive jurisdictions — gold, copper, rare earths and other strategic minerals increasingly fall into this category, because today they also carry a national-security and geopolitical-dispute component that steel or iron ore didn't carry a decade ago. Negotiating without a built-in exit for the regulatory-rejection scenario is betting the entire deal on a variable neither party controls.

For Allied Gold, the outcome isn't a total defeat: the $295 million will fund the completion of the Kurmuk mine in Ethiopia, the expansion of Sadiola in Mali, and higher output in Côte d'Ivoire — projects that would otherwise stay stalled without that capital. For Zijin, the 9.2% stake preserves a strategic foothold in African gold assets without the political risk of a full acquisition. For the market, the episode reinforces that consolidation in critical-metals mining today plays out on two boards at once — financial and geopolitical — and that ignoring the second one can cost an entire deal, even with everything else ready.