November 19, 2012 – Republic of Mining

Tension for Xstrata board as Glencore deal nears finish line – by Clara Ferreira-Marques (Reuters – November 18, 2012)

November 19, 2012

http://www.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Commodities trader Glencore (GLEN.L) is set to all but clinch its $30 billion takeover of Xstrata this week, despite a potential snub for the miner’s board if, as expected, investors scrap a controversial pay plan for its managers.

Shareholders in both Glencore and Xstrata (XTA.L), the world’s fourth-largest diversified miner, will vote in Switzerland on Tuesday.

European competition regulators will decide by Thursday whether to give the green light to one of the sector’s biggest ever acquisitions, or begin a longer probe.

After nine months of unexpected twists and wrangling between Xstrata and its top shareholders – not to mention years of on-off talks between the miner and trader – the deal is moving towards the finish line, a victory for Glencore’s boss, top shareholder and the deal’s chief cheerleader, Ivan Glasenberg.

The deal’s prospects were boosted last week thanks to support offered by Xstrata’s second-largest investor, Qatar, overcoming initial reticence over the terms of the deal. Glencore, Xstrata’s top shareholder, has separately offered up antitrust concessions, in the hope of securing an EU nod.

‘Challenging times’ for juniors have consequences for exploration pipeline—E&Y – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – November 19, 2012)

November 19, 2012

http://www.mineweb.com/

The newly published Ernst & Young Mining Eye Index sees 2012 yielding a crop of smarter and leaner junior mining companies.

RENO (MINEWEB) – “The outlook for equity markets remains uncertain and unpredictable, with the apparent disconnect between assets and commodity values showing little sign of abatement,” says Ernst & Young.

In the latest edition of its Mining Eye Index, which monitors the performance of AIM-listed mining companies, Ernst & Young’s Mining & Metals Group observed “financing conditions on equity markets remain challenging for junior miners, with quarterly equity proceeds raised by the sector on AIM at their lowest since Q3 2004 (at €84 m).”

Meanwhile, “risk aversion among investors is being met with reluctance from companies to further dilute holdings of existing shareholders at current share prices,” says Ernst & Young.

“The funding challenge is compounded in an environment of high and increasing operating costs, weakness in certain commodities, and unforeseen operational challenges, which can quickly and dramatically impact short-term working capital,” Ernest & Young advised.

“The tightening availability of equity (and absence of available debt) reduces financial headroom and impacts companies’ ability to swiftly address unexpected cash flow shortfalls or capital outlays,” E&Y noted.

Agrium forced into the proxy ring – by Boyd Erman (Globe and Mail – November 19, 2012)

November 19, 2012

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.

Another large Canadian company is facing a battle in the boardroom, as the biggest shareholder of Agrium Inc. attempts to replace almost half of the company’s directors as part of a campaign to break up the business.

Jana Partners LLC, a New York hedge fund, is proposing a slate of five new directors for Agrium’s 11-person board, including three corporate executives and a former Canadian agriculture minister. The fifth nominee is Jana’s founder, Barry Rosenstein.

Calgary-based Agrium owns a global network of facilities where it makes fertilizer, and also has a network of farm-products stores in Canada, the United States, Australia and South America.

For months, Jana has criticized Agrium for what it says are elevated expenses and poor use of capital, and has argued that shareholders would be better off if the farm stores were split into a separate company. Agrium has resisted that idea.

The prospect of a proxy fight raises the stakes, and to help its cause, Jana has also increased its stake in the company to 6 per cent from 4 per cent. Agrium joins a growing list of big Canadian companies that have become targets of activist investors, shaking a sense of invulnerability in the boardrooms of the Canadian corporate establishment.

Scenes from a Carriage Dream (Ontario Northland Railroad] – by Dan Hokstad (North Bay Nugget – November 17, 2012)

November 19, 2012

http://www.nugget.ca/

Dan Hokstad is a teacher and author of The Sacred Ash. On the web: www.danhokstad.com

Railroads run through our city like arteries, and they have always been the lifelines of North Bay: the heart of a community built “north of the bay.” Knowing that people traveled from the Atlantic to the Pacific or from the Great Lakes to James Bay, and that they passed through our neck of the woods, was like being joyously coupled with the rest of the world. As a child in bed, drifting off to sleep, the resonating train whistles that reached your window would stir enough images of adventures to fill a thousand dreams.

The sheer excitement and anticipation of standing at the C.P.R. Station downtown, waiting to welcome family home or board a train yourself, was blissful happiness. On more than one occasion, I journeyed east; truth be told, I often rode (somewhat surreptitiously) with the conductor in the baggage car. The exhilaration and danger of standing in a freight car, with the door wide open as the Ottawa valley rumbled by, was thrilling and unforgettable.

And, as I helped sort the luggage and packages, he told me tales. One was about the legendary strength of Bonfield native Ernie Foisy. Ernie could single-handedly lift a rail line; he would often tuck a ten-spot under it, and then advise the latest brakeman that it was his to keep – if he could get it. None ever could.

Boarding the train at the C.N. Station on Fraser Street was just as enthralling. For many, it was the anticipation of the Northlander and a spiritual trip north through the Canadian Shield. For me, it meant a direct link to Toronto.

The idea of regional government [Northern Ontario] – Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal Editorial (November 19, 2012)

November 19, 2012

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

WHAT does a former Winnipeg mayor-turned Toronto MPP know about Northwestern Ontario? Quite a lot, it seems. Glen Murray, running to replace Premier Dalton McGuinty, is pitching an idea that officials in this region have been seeking in some form for decades — regional government.

Parsing Murray’s plan will take time but area leaders were quick to endorse its thrust: Give Northerners control over their own resources, energy, transportation, infrastructure, employment and training, and regional planning. Northerners could set their own resource tax rates and energy prices and they’d get a proportional share of provincial tax revenues.

This is where the proposal needs detail. A Northern government would be formed with a corresponding reduction of the power and budget held by Queen’s Park, Murray said. Just what power would remain in Toronto and how much real autonomy for setting policy would come here? Queen’s Park will not let go completely the hand that holds the lion’s share of Ontario resource wealth.

Murray’s idea is well worth detailed consideration. At the same time, northerners should not be too quick to simply abandon the south and its seat of government. This region has relied heavily on provincial funds and programs and must consider carefully what might be given up to finally achieve more control over our destiny.

Murray appears to have done some homework on this file. He reiterated the many attempts made “to try and make the North work . . . None of them have been sufficient.”

Liberal leadership candidate in favour of ‘autonomous North’ – by Kyle Gennings (Timmins Daily Press – November 19, 2012)

November 19, 2012

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – A candidate running for the Ontario Liberal leadership spoke in support of an autonomous North during a stop in Timmins Saturday.

“As an MPP for the past few years, I’ve seen at Queen’s Park exactly why things don’t work for Northern Ontario,” said Glen Murray (Liberal – Toronto Centre) who is among the candidates who have come forward to replace Dalton McGuinty. “Playing party to trying to create changes in the North, you can see the disconnect, you can see that there are a lot people who don’t get how different the challenges are.”

For Murray, the economic differences that separate north from south are just the starting point of the differences between the two regions of Ontario.

“The economy has two huge pillars that support it. One that has been quite weak – forestry – which resulted from the collapse of the housing market which shattered the demand for lumber,” he said. “The mining industry has been solidly booming across the board. Nowhere else in Ontario is the resource industry so fundamentally important.

You would never think of taking the security exchange commission away from Toronto because banking and financial services in Canada are at the very core of the Toronto economy and the only reason for its existence was that it quickly came together to raise the funds necessary to ensure the gold boom in the North.”

As Coal Boosts Mozambique, the Rural Poor Are Left Behind – by Lydia Polgreen (New York Times – November 10, 2012)

November 19, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/

CATEME, Mozambique — When Augusto Conselho Chachoka and his neighbors heard that the world’s biggest coal mine was to be built on their land, a tantalizing new future floated before them. Instead of scraping by as subsistence farmers, they would earn wages as miners, they thought. The mining company would build them sturdy new houses, it seemed. Finally, a slice of the wealth that has propelled Mozambique from its war-addled past to its newfound status as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies would be theirs.

Instead, they ended up being moved 25 miles away from the mine, living in crumbling, leaky houses, farming barren plots of land, far from any kind of jobs that the mine might create and farther than ever from Mozambique’s growth miracle.

“Development is coming, but the development is going to certain areas and certain people,” Mr. Chachoka said, taking a break from trying to coax enough food from his scraggly field to feed his six children.

Mozambique is one of the poorest nations in the world, broken by a brutal colonial legacy, a 16-year civil war and failed experiments with Marxist economic policy. But it is also one of the so-called African Lions: countries that are growing at well above 6 percent annually, even amid the global downturn.

Mozambique is poised for a long economic boom, driven by its vast deposits of coal and natural gas. Vale, the Brazilian mining company, is planning to invest $6 billion in its coal operation near here, and other coal giants like Rio Tinto will soon begin producing coal in the Tete region of northern Mozambique.

Feds won’t be pushed into fast decision on Nexen – by Andy Hoffman and Carrie Tait (Globe and Mail – November 17, 2012)

November 19, 2012

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.

VANCOUVER, CALGARY — The federal government is not rushing to rule on whether state-owned foreign companies can buy Canadian resources without comprehensive examinations, even with a key deadline on the horizon.

Ed Fast, Minister for International Trade and for the Asia-Pacific Gateway, said he expects Ottawa to clarify the so-called net benefit test “very soon.” Foreign companies must prove their acquisitions will benefit Canada to obtain approval for proposed takeovers of domestic companies with assets of more than $312-million. Industry Minister Christian Paradis is currently reviewing two major deals involving state-controlled companies out of Asia.

“I would say this: With respect to the Chinese, Canadians expect us to exercise a high level of due diligence in our dealings with our trade partners, especially where state-owned enterprises are concerned. I would hope that the Chinese also understand how important this is to Canada that we get it right,” Mr. Fast said in an interview Thursday.

“I’m committed to getting it right and I know that the Industry Minister is committed to getting it right. … Our government is committed to getting it right. But we will not be pushed or hurried into making these kinds of decisions.”

Peak Oil? More like Peak Canada – by Doug Saunders (Globe and Mail – November 17, 2012)

November 19, 2012

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.

LETHBRIDGE, ALTA.- Good morning, students. The results from last week’s history test have been transconducted into your NeuroPads. Now, if you’ll all please disengage your BrainFeeds and start listening, I’ll be talking today about one of the most misunderstood episodes in Canadian history.

This occurred over the first decade and a half of the 21st century. It was Canada’s global moment of arrogant pride – the Great Hubris, as it’s remembered today – our country’s moment of squandered opportunity. In those heady years, Canadian leaders and citizens alike became convinced that their country was an energy superpower possessed of powers unique in the world.

Canada, for a while, went mad. We believed we were above the laws of economics and politics and energy – a country that had magically resisted the First New Depression of 2008, and had an export so desirable that we could ignore ecological warnings and well-established international partnerships and blacken the good name Canada had earned the previous century. Our leaders bossed around the world, believing everyone wanted their controversial oil and would ignore its many serious problems if they simply branded it “ethical.”