SYDNEY — Australia's benchmark share index rose 0.33% to 8,693.3 points by mid-afternoon Monday, adding 28.3 points, as shares in Northern Star Resources jumped after the country's largest gold miner disclosed it had rejected a A$38.7 billion takeover approach from South Africa's Gold Fields, helping the market ease back from a four-week losing streak.

The S&P/ASX 200 finished last week with a 0.45% decline to 8,665 points, capping a fourth consecutive weekly retreat. Monday's modest advance came on a relatively quiet day for economic data ahead of Tuesday's Reserve Bank of Australia monetary policy meeting, with market attention instead focused on corporate news, commodity prices and geopolitical developments.

The session's most significant development came from Northern Star, which confirmed in a statement that it had "received, considered and rejected a confidential, opportunistic, unsolicited and conditional non-binding indicative proposal from Gold Fields," according to Bloomberg. The proposal, received on September 14, sought to acquire 100% of Northern Star's shares through a scheme of arrangement, offering 0.3125 new Gold Fields shares plus A$7.25 in cash for each Northern Star share. Based on Gold Fields' closing share price on September 11, the last trading day before the approach, the proposal implied a value of A$27.00 per Northern Star share and an equity value of approximately A$38.7 billion, or US$27.1 billion, representing a 22% premium to Northern Star's closing price that day and a........

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