CEO Ivan Glasenberg said Tuesday the $30 billion bid for Xstrata is not a must-do deal, strongly suggesting it will not yield to key shareholder Qatar’s demands for an improved offer.
LONDON (Reuters) - Glencore’s $30 billion bid for miner Xstrata is not a “must-do deal” its chief executive said on Tuesday, in making the company’s strongest suggestion yet that it will not yield to key shareholder Qatar’s demands for an improved offer.
Ivan Glasenberg, speaking after the commodities trader reported a smaller than expected drop in its first-half profit, expressed exasperation with Qatar Holding, which has been in a stand-off with Glencore since the sovereign wealth fund surprised the market by demanding an improvement to Glencore’s offer of 2.8 new shares for every Xstrata share.
Qatar has increased to 12 percent a less than 3 percent stake in Xstrata since the all-share bid was announced earlier this year, less than Glencore’s own 34 percent holding but enough to block the takeover under the current deal structure. Read the rest of this entry »
’You ain’t seen nothing yet’ for northern resource development, Harper tells partisan crowd
As the classic Canadian poem says, the Yukon is where people moil for gold. And today Stephen Harper is off to see what a more modern day version of that work looks like. On his first full day in the North, Harper was to tour Captstone’s copper gold Minto mine, about 240 kilometres north of Whitehorse.
His visit comes after a speech to party faithful last night in the territorial capital where he extolled the development of the North’s resources as the “great national dream.” The speech reiterated the priority the Conservatives say they’ve placed on the North since being elected in 2006.
“The North’s time has come,” Harper told a crowd of about 300 Conservative supporters at a rally Monday night. ”I tell people starting to see the activity here, you ain’t seen nothing yet in terms of what’s coming in the next decade.”
Boosting resource development
Natural resources development has also become a renewed focus of the Harper government as countries the world express eagerness to receive a greater share. Read the rest of this entry »
The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.
It is easy to be skeptical about Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s annual jaunts to the Arctic, the latest of which he has embarked upon this week. For all the photo opportunities in front of spectacular backdrops, and northern-sovereignty rhetoric that fits neatly into the Conservatives’ political brand, little progress has been made toward many of the commitments that Mr. Harper has announced during them, including military procurements and the building of a “High Arctic research centre.”
To entirely dismiss these trips, however, would be to sell Mr. Harper short. Before he took office in 2006, the Far North was barely on the national radar, largely because the federal government had not made it a priority. That has dramatically changed – partly because climate change is opening up the Northwest Passage as a commercial shipping route, greatly enhancing its strategic importance, but also because Mr. Harper has made a sustained effort to instill pride in an enormous swath of the country where most Canadians have not actually ventured.
The question, now, is how best to channel that focus. On Mr. Harper’s past trips, the words and imagery have centred around defence, enough to give the impression that Canada boasts sole ownership of the Northwest Passage – which few other countries agree with – and that it is prepared to defend this claim by force. Read the rest of this entry »
The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.
There is a lot of buzz in the media and online about the federal government’s plan to pass legislation that would create private property rights on Canadian Indian reserves.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, much of this buzz has been negative, with commentators expressing fear and doubt about the merits of the proposal. Much of this apprehension, however, is based on misconceptions about what actually is being proposed.
The following are the top five myths about the proposed First Nations Property Ownership Act:
Myth 1: Indigenous peoples don’t need this legislation. The status quo is fine because doing business on-reserve is the same as doing business off-reserve.
In fact, doing business on-reserve is nothing like doing business off-reserve. The Indian Act imposes significant transaction costs on investors, discouraging them from investing on-reserve. Read the rest of this entry »
Prime Minister Stephen Harper today visited Minto Mine, a copper-gold mine in Yukon, to highlight the economic benefits of responsible resource development in the region and to witness the signing of an agreement that will help Yukon further benefit from resource development. The visit took place during the Prime Minister’s seventh annual Northern Tour, taking place from August 20-24, 2012.
“Our Government is committed to ensuring that Northerners benefit from the tremendous natural resource reserves that are found in their region,” said the Prime Minister. “For the benefits to flow, it is necessary to get resource projects up and running in an effective and responsible way and to put agreements in place with territorial Governments to ensure that revenues generated by these initiatives stay up North.”
While in Minto, the Prime Minister witnessed the Honourable John Duncan, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development and the Honourable Darrell Pasloski, Premier of Yukon, sign amendments to resource revenue sharing agreements which will ensure a greater portion of the revenues generated from the mining and resource economy in Yukon will be available for use in the territory. Read the rest of this entry »
The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.
JOHANNESBURG—Miners and their families welcomed expelled politician Julius Malema on Saturday as he told the thousands who gathered at the site where 34 miners were killed this week that South African police had no right to fire the live bullets that killed them.
Malema, the former youth leader of the governing African National Congress, arrived as family members continued to hunt for loved ones missing since Thursday’s shootings. Women said they did not know if their husbands and sons were among the dead, or among the 78 wounded or some 256 arrested by police on charges from public violence to murder.
“They had no right to shoot,” Malema said, even if the miners had opened fire first. Malema is the first politician to address the miners at the site during a more than week-long saga in which 10 people were killed before Thursday’s shootings — including two police officers butchered to death and two mine security guards whom strikers burned alive in their vehicle. He said he had come because the government had turned its back on the strikers. Read the rest of this entry »
The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.
JHARIA, India — For nearly a century now, fires have burned beneath the ground where Mohammad Riyaz Ansari stands. At night, ghostly blue flares shoot from glowing rocks, like a terrible hell on Earth.
The 55-year-old mechanic and his neighbours here, deep in eastern India’s coal country, live above underground coal fires that are eating away at their land, India’s precious natural resources and, say some, government credibility.
As the ground subsides, thousands of houses, including Ansari’s, have sagged, collapsed or fallen into chasms over the years, including 250 destroyed over two hours in 1995.
In this eerie landscape — the plumes of flame igniting periodically as combustible gas escapes from the subterranean fires — locals speak of neighbours swallowed in their sleep. In 2006, for instance, 14-year-old Mira Kumari vanished while cooking when her house fell 15 metres underground. Her body was never recovered. Read the rest of this entry »
The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.
In a startling development, the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline idea has been resurrected. Until Friday, the smart money was calling this line doomed by overwhelming political forces. Its chances must now be at least 50-50.
The startling development is a proposal for a $13-billion oil refinery at Kitimat, B.C., that would provide 6,000 construction jobs for five years and 3,000 direct jobs thereafter, as well as thousands of service spinoffs. Hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax revenues would be generated annually. In effect, our resources would have value added here instead of in China. No government could ignore that kind of opportunity.
On the environmental side, the idea would vastly reduce concerns about tanker accidents. No longer would the floating behemoths be carrying heavy bitumen. Instead, the cargo would be diesel, gasoline or jet fuel, all of which evaporate quickly after a spill. Environmentalists should be overjoyed. Read the rest of this entry »
The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry.
In the world of mine development and its outsized scales of size, time and money, there’s always this thought in the back of the mind while listening to any promoter’s pitch: “Well, it may never happen.”
This was the case with Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s $80-billion, multi-decade pro-mining Plan Nord northern development program, which went way beyond the mandate of a parliamentary government and its typical four- to five-year lifespan.
On the other hand, the Quebec government’s track record in realizing the vast James Bay hydro-power development over several decades and changes in governing party shows there can be the will to get big things done in Quebec’s Far North, regardless of who holds the reins in Quebec’s National Assembly.
However, the increasing likelihood that the provincial government in Quebec will change in September has cast new doubt on whether the premier’s ambitious plan will ever be made real. Read the rest of this entry »
(Above) CBC news clip about Harper’s Northern Tour which will emphasize resource development. www.cbc.ca
The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.
“Because that great national dream — the development of northern resources
— no longer sleeps. It is not down the road. It is happening now … the
North’s time has come, my friends, and you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
(Prime Minister Stephen Harper – August 20, 2012)
CARCROSS, YUKON—Prime Minister Stephen says Canada’s future lies in the exploitation of the nation’s northern resource riches, branding it as a “great national dream.”
Harper kicked off his annual tour of northern Canada here Monday with a bullish vision that sees the country’s prosperity fuelled by the untapped Arctic resources. “Those who want to see the future of this country should look north,” the prime minister told a gathering of Conservative supporters.
“Because that great national dream — the development of northern resources — no longer sleeps. It is not down the road. It is happening now,” Harper said in a speech at this small outpost south of Whitehorse. “The North’s time has come, my friends, and you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Harper made the comments even as controversy flares on another resource front — the plan to pipe Alberta oil over sensitive British Columbia lands to the Pacific coast and on to Asian markets.
The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.
The association of unions whose 800 members work for Ontario Northland Transportation Commission has asked for Northern Development and Mines Minister Rick Bartolucci’s resignation in the past, but the General Chairperson’s Association is changing its tune.
It is now asking the longtime Sudbury MPP to “do the right thing” and retire from politics over his government’s decision to divest itself of the ONTC. GCA spokesman Brian Kelly said Monday that Bartolucci has represented Northern Ontario well in the last 17 years.
But Kelly said it’s time for Bartolucci to leave politics, a move that might prompt his boss, Premier Dalton McGuinty, to take action to save the ONTC. Kelly charged that McGuinty throws money at the riding of Kitchener-Waterloo, where a Sept. 6 byelection to replace Progressive Conservative MPP Elizabeth Witmer is shaping up to be a game-changer.
One seat short of a Liberal majority, all political eyes are on the riding, which could change the balance of power at Queen’s Park. Read the rest of this entry »
