Word: tinto
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Australian resources themselves. Twice this year, Chinese state-owned enterprises have snapped up major Australian mining stakes. But the biggest deal didn't go through. The state-owned Aluminum Corp. of China, better known as Chinalco, was supposed to take a $19.5 billion stake in Australian-British Rio Tinto, which controls, among other mines, vast iron-ore deposits in Australia. The bid sparked a huge controversy in Australia, with the political opposition running TV ads skewering any proposed deal. In June Rio Tinto's shareholders backed out, arguing that the company's recovering stock price allowed them to consider other...
...timing, the people and the company involved in this case make it anything but routine. The arrests have thrown already-fraught relations between Australia and China - its largest trading partner - into an uproar, and for good reason: Stern Hu and his deputies were in charge of Rio Tinto's negotiations over the price of iron ore with Chinese steelmakers. China is now the word's largest consumer of iron ore, and Rio its largest supplier - shoveling vast amounts of high-quality ore from its huge mines in western Australia. The price negotiations were ongoing at the time...
...That alone would make the timing of the arrests interesting, at minimum. But they also come just weeks after Rio Tinto ultimately snubbed what would have been China's largest foreign direct investment ever: a planned $19.5 billion stake that Chinalco - Beijing's largest state-owned aluminum company - had offered Rio late last year, when prices for the commodities it mines had hit rock bottom as the global recession took hold. Since then, prices for iron ore and other commodities have rebounded, in no small part because of demand from China, which is in the midst of a huge, government...
...have Rio Tinto's point man on the iron-ore price talks arrested now, on charges of violating the state-secrets law, stunned Canberra - as well as much of the foreign business community in China. "People here are intensely interested to see if there's any substance to these charges, and to what extent the government will make them public," said the director of one foreign-business association in China, who did not want to speak on the record. "If this is seen as political, it could obviously have a chilling effect." A Rio spokeswoman said the company "is aware...
...saying what he had to say publicly, but the truth was exactly the opposite. Barring new information as to why, exactly, Hu and his team were arrested, the only basis for speculation as to the motive behind the detentions necessarily revolved around China's anger at Rio Tinto. And until and unless Beijing can put what the foreign-business association representative called "some meat on the bones of this allegation," that's a problem for China...