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Any unfriendly international takeover attempt is like a long, exhausting soccer game as executive teams and their hired guns, shareholders, the quick-buck hedge funds, and politicians all try to manoeuvre for the best positions. The process can take months as each of the players look for weaknesses to exploit, hurl insults at each other and place their bets.
And so it is with Teck Resources, Canada’s last big diversified mining company. In its effort to fend off mighty Glencore of Switzerland, Teck has in effect recruited allies in the form of the federal and provincial governments while it scrambles to concoct a value-creation plan that is not dead on arrival.
But Teck and the governments are losing already. So far, Glencore is the only game in town and this is a company that knows how to play a takeover. Putting Teck in the same arena as Glencore is like putting a lamb in a cage with a lion.
The Teck board and its controlling shareholder, chairman emeritus Norman B. Keevil, who is equipped with a dollop of supervoting class A shares, have rejected Glencore’s opening offer and a revised bid that tossed in a cash option. They will no doubt reject the next one, with an improved premium, which Glencore has all but promised to make.
For the rest of this column: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-ottawa-may-bluster-but-there-is-no-canadian-solution-for-teck-that/