Bhp Billington Takes over Potage

BHP Billiton Making the earth move Aug 19th 2010 BHP Billitons remarkable harvest-time has been driven by luck, shrewd dealmaking and, above all, Chinas demand for steel Where theres muck, theres fuzz and zinc AROUND the turn of the millennium the bosses of Billiton, an ambitious South African mining company, sat in the lobby of a larger fund manager waiting to talk up their stanchs prospects. At first they were welcomed warmly. But their hosts smiles turned to frowns when they observed that the waiting delegation was from a firm in the out business of mining. They had been expecting a group from lastminute.com, an online travel agent with a seemingly bright future. In March 2001, after the dotcom lucubrate ran out of puff, Billiton and Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP), an Australian rival, revealed plans to merge. A decade on BHP Billiton is a vast multinational in a business dominated by powerful firms. Its monetary might was made apparent on August 17th, when PotashCorp, a Canadian fertiliser firm, rejected a $40 one thousand million unsolicited takeover offer from BHP, calling the bid grossly inadequate.

Earlier this year the firm was instrumental in the opposition to Kevin Rudd, then Australias prime minister, who was trying to chatter a supertax on mining firms (Mr Rudd resigned in June, partly as a result). Its market capitalisation of $ one hundred ninety billion puts it ninth on the list of the worlds largest listed companies. And as for lastminute.com, it was snapped up by Sabre, an American travel firm, for incisively £577m ($1.07 billion) in 2005. Mining has been a good business in the past few years, thanks largely to China. Once a minor consumer, that country is now hungry for metal to repay its office buildings and keep its factories humming. In 2009 China nabbed across-the-boardy 67% of all internationally traded iron ore. But BHP has outshone its peers in novel years, as its shares performance demonstrates (see chart 1). In 2001 the newly unified company was only just... If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay

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