Toronto-based Business News Network (BNN) is a Canadian cable television specialty channel. BNN airs business and financial programming and analysis. BNN reporter Andrew Bell hosts the Commodities program. From aluminum to zinc and everything in between, BNN highlights the hot world of commodities and the companies that produce them, including interviews with mineral and mining entrepreneurs from Canada and around the globe.
We also got a snapshot of the planet’s biggest mining companies, which are struggling with glutted metals markets but managed to swing to positive cash flow in 2014 as costs fell. But John Gravelle, global mining leader at PwC, told us that the Top 40 miners have creaking balance sheets. The giant producers “barely covered dividends in 2014,” PwC’s annual “Mine” report warns. “That’s after having borrowed the year before to satisfy dividend payments. This practice isn’t sustainable in the long-term. Although not as drastic as in 2013, dividends paid in 2014 consumed all available cash, reducing the balance sheet flexibility of miners in the expected continuing lean times.” (Andrew Bell)