Hecla to Buy Aurizon Mines for CAD$796

Los Angelas, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/04/2013 -- Hecla Mining Company (NYSE:HL) is engaged in discovering, acquiring, developing, producing, and marketing silver, gold, lead and zinc. The Company operates in two segments: the Greens Creek unit and the Lucky Friday unit. Its wholly-owned subsidiary is Hecla Alaska LLC. The Company produces zinc, lead and bulk concentrates at its Greens Creek unit and lead and zinc concentrates at its Lucky Friday unit, which it sells to custom smelters on contract, and unrefined gold and silver bullion bars (dore) at Greens Creek, which are sold directly to customers or further refined before sale to precious metals traders.

The concentrates produced at its Greens Creek and Lucky Friday units contain payable silver, zinc and lead, and the concentrates produced at Greens Creek also contain payable gold. During the year ended December 31, 2011, the Company produced 9,483,676 ounces of silver, 56,818 ounces of gold, 39,150 tons of lead and 73,355 tons of Zinc.

Hecla Mining Company (NYSE:HL) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a definitive arrangement agreement (Arrangement Agreement) with Aurizon Mines Ltd. pursuant to which Hecla will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Aurizon in a transaction with a total value of approximately CAD$796 million (the Transaction).

Under the terms of the Transaction, which is similar to a merger with a Hecla subsidiary under U.S. Law, Hecla will acquire all of the outstanding common shares of Aurizon for consideration valued at CAD$4.75 per share. Each holder of Aurizon common shares (Shareholder) may elect to receive either CAD$4.75 in cash (Cash Alternative) or 0.9953 of a Hecla share (Share Alternative), subject in each case to pro-ration based on a maximum cash consideration of CAD$513,631,193 and a maximum number of Hecla shares issued of 57,000,000. Assuming that all Shareholders elected either the Cash Alternative or the Share Alternative, each Shareholder would be entitled to receive CAD$3.11 in cash and 0.34462 of a Hecla share for each Aurizon common share.

Aurizon announced today that its Board of Directors, upon the recommendation of a Special Committee of the Board and after receipt of advice from its financial and legal advisers, has unanimously determined that the Transaction is in the best interests of Aurizon, is fair to shareholders and recommends that shareholders of Aurizon vote in favor of approving the Transaction. In addition, all the directors and senior officers of Aurizon have agreed to vote their shares in favor of the deal.

Based on the closing price of the shares of Aurizon and Hecla on March 1, 2013, the Transaction implies a value per Aurizon share of CAD$4.75, which represents a premium of approximately 39% to the unaffected Aurizon share price on January 11, 2013, the last trading day prior to the announcement of the unsolicited bid for Aurizon by Alamos Gold Inc.

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