CALGARY – The hostile takeover of Canada’s largest diversified mining company by a foreign entity would weaken this country’s chances of becoming a leader in critical minerals, according to industry watchers.
Critics of the recent unsolicited proposal by Swiss commodities giant Glencore to buy Vancouver-based mining company Teck Resources Ltd. say such a transaction would mean a “hollowing out” of Canada’s mining industry at a time when the sector could be poised for a boom.
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Teck Resources Ltd. chief executive officer Jonathan Price expressed confidence its biggest B-shareholder, China Investment Corp. (CIC), will vote for the Canadian miner’s proposed split and not back Glencore’s hostile takeover proposal, as he battles to correct misinformation that has seeped into the market.
Mr. Price disputed a Bloomberg news article on Friday that cited unnamed sources who claimed CIC was leaning toward voting down Teck’s split. The article, which did not carry a byline, also claimed that Glencore executives had already spoken with CIC executives about the matter.
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Ivan Glasenberg was known as the great white shark of global resources industry when he was running Glencore, the world’s biggest commodities trader and one of the biggest mining companies. He never shied away from tough, even seemingly impossible, takeover battles and won more than he lost.
Take the epic fist fight in 2005 and 2006 for Canada’s premier nickel mining companies, Falconbridge and Inco. At the time, Glencore was private but owned 40 per cent of Xstrata, which in effect operated as Glencore’s listed machine for mergers and acquisitions. (In 2011, Glencore joined the London Stock Exchange and bought all of Xstrata two years later.)
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Teck shortens coal exit timeline as fossil fuel exposure dominates merger talks
Teck Resources Ltd. offered shareholders an earlier exit from exposure to the company’s coal business, as the issue of turning Teck into a greener miner takes centre stage in the takeover battle between the company’s management and Swiss commodities giant Glencore Plc.
In February, Teck announced a plan to separate its copper and coal assets by dividing itself into two publicly listed entities: Teck Metals and Elk Valley Resources (EVR). Shareholders are set to vote on the proposal later this month.
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Teck Resources Ltd. chief executive officer Jonathan Price played down any notion of its metals business being quickly acquired by a big foreign multinational after a planned split of the company, as the Canadian miner rejected Glencore PLC’s latest hostile takeover offer.
Vancouver-based Teck said earlier this year that it plans to separate into Elk Valley Resources, containing its metallurgical coal assets, and Teck Metals, holding its copper and zinc mines.
With its offer to buy Teck, the world’s largest commodity trader may have also hung out a “for sale” sign visible to its only potential acquirer: BHP
Teck Resources Ltd.’s rejection of Glencore Plc’s $23 billion takeover bid was hardly the end of their dealmaking story. It was closer to the end of the beginning. In the next chapter’s plot twist, the buyer could very well become a seller in a transaction that reshapes the global mining industry.
By proposing to Teck that they spin off their coal assets and sell noncore businesses, Glencore’s decisionmakers knew they were doing more than configuring a new commodities giant. Unwittingly or not, they were also putting the “for sale” sign above their own company — a placard visible to the only company that has the potential interest and means to acquire them: BHP Group Ltd.
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The pure coal company that Vancouver’s Teck Resources Ltd. plans to create will likely land in the hands of predatory foreign investors, delivering a blow to Teck’s efforts to keep those assets under full Canadian control, the chief executive officer of Switzerland’s Glencore PLC GLNCY +2.22%increase
says.
In an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail on Tuesday, Gary Nagle said he is aware of several investors who are eyeing Elk Valley Resources, the coal company that Teck plans to form through a spinoff, all of them foreign.
Glencore (LON: GLEN) is stepping up efforts to take over Teck Resources (TSX: TECK.A, TECK.B)(NYSE: TECK) by adding on Tuesday a $8.2-billion cash component to its original $23 billion bid for Canada’s largest diversified miner.
The revised proposal gives Teck’s shareholders the option to receive cash instead of exposure to the companies’ combined coal portfolio, plus 24% of the combined metals-focused business. The Swiss miner and commodities trader’s original all-stock deal was to acquire Teck and then separate itself into two companies, with one unit holding assets in thermal and metallurgical coal, as well as oil, and the other containing its base-metals portfolio.
(Bloomberg) — The fate of the biggest mining deal in more than a decade lies in the hands of a Canadian magnate who built a fortune on copper and coal.
Norman Keevil Jr., 85, is the controlling shareholder of Teck Resources Ltd., a mining company he built with his father nearly six decades ago. Today, the Vancouver-based firm produces copper and zinc from a handful of mines scattered across the Americas, and steelmaking coal from lucrative operations in Canada.
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Canadian mining companies have a long history of selling out to foreign buyers, but this past week one man with unique powers to fight back drew an indelible line in the sand.
Taking a fiercely nationalistic stand against Glencore PLC’s US$23.1-billion proposed takeover of Teck Resources Ltd., controlling shareholder Norman B. Keevil told The Globe and Mail that the big Swiss miner can hike its price all it wants, but he will not play ball. “Canada is not for sale,” he said.
DNIPROPETROVSK OBLAST, UKRAINE — Deep underground in southeastern Ukraine, miners work around the clock extracting coal to power the country’s war effort and to provide civilians with light and heat.
Coal is central to meeting Ukraine’s energy needs following the Russian military’s 6-month campaign to destroy power stations and other infrastructure, the chief engineer of a mining company in Dnipropetrovsk province said.
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Peter Munk would be thigh-slapping proud of Norman B. Keevil, the chairman emeritus of Teck Resources: the last big diversified mining company standing in the graveyard of Canadian mining companies.
Mr. Keevil (“Norm” to his friends and colleagues) is the son of Norman Bell Keevil, the prospector who, over a century ago, used a gold discovery in northern Ontario to launch what would become an international player in copper and zinc, with a market value of $30-billion.
(Bloomberg) — Like so much in our modern era, Australia’s high-stakes gamble on renewable energy starts with an Elon Musk Twitter brag. South Australia’s last coal-fired power plant had closed, leaving the province of 1.8 million heavily reliant on wind farms and power imports from a neighboring region.
When an unprecedented blackout caused much of the country to question the state’s dependence on clean power, Tesla boasted — on Twitter, of course — that it had a solution: It could build the world’s biggest battery, and fast. “@Elonmusk, how serious are you about this,” replied Australian software billionaire and climate activist Mike Cannon-Brookes. “Can you guarantee 100MW in 100 days?”
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Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., a major holder of Teck Resources Ltd.’s super-voting Class A shares, is refusing even to take a meeting with Glencore PLC to discuss the Swiss mining giant’s unsolicited takeover proposal for Teck. Sumitomo and the Keevil family jointly control Teck’s Class A shares that carry 100 votes each. Unless both are on board with Glencore’s US$23.1-billion takeover proposal, it can’t move forward.
Earlier in the week, Keevil family patriarch Norman B. Keevil told The Globe and Mail that he had no interest in allowing Vancouver-based Teck to be sold to Glencore, no matter what the price.
Teck-Glencore clash represents contrast in strategies for confronting energy transition
Teck Resources Ltd. had a novel rationale for rejecting Glencore Plc‘s US$23-billion takeover proposal this week: the Vancouver-based miner said the Swiss commodities giant was too dirty and Teck’s leaders didn’t want Glencore’s commitment to fossil fuels rubbing off on the long-term value of the company.
As chief executive Jonathan Price put it in a press release, Glencore’s thermal coal assets and oil trading would “negatively impact the value potential of Teck’s business.”
