Shareholders in the mining firm are unimpressed by the offer as it stands but what happens next could be interesting
BHP move to buy Anglo American threatens to hasten City exodus
In theory, Anglo American has been a sitting duck for a takeover bid for about a decade. Its share price has lagged behind that of other big miners and successive efforts to sharpen a sprawling portfolio have underwhelmed. The last news, at the end of 2023, was production delays that sent the shares down 20% in a day.
In practice, the same complexities, plus deep entanglement in South African politics, have served as a deterrent to a bid. Anglo was seen as too fiddly. But here comes BHP, the Australian giant of the sector, with a proposal to cut through the noise and get to the assets it would like to own, primarily Anglo’s copper mines in Peru and Chile and, to a lesser extent, its iron ore projects in Brazil and metallurgical coal in Queensland.
