October 18, 2008
WITH commodities prices plunging and resource stocks under huge selling pressure, a consortium of major Japanese and Korean steelmakers has made a daring $US3 billion ($4.4 billion) raid on one of Brazil's largest iron ore mining companies.
Posco, Asia's third-biggest steelmaker, and Japanese partners agreed to acquire a combined 40 per cent stake in the Cia Siderurgica Nacional unit Nacional Minerios or Namisa.
The Asian consortium's ambitious exercise directly exploits the current market turmoil and offers a rare glimmer of opportunity for the world's largest steelmakers.
The past year has seen the power balance between steelmakers and miners swing to the latter, with the world's largest iron ore and coking coal producers able to demand 200 per cent price hikes in some of their products when spot markets lurched higher earlier this year.
The seven-strong consortium is understood to include Nippon Steel, JFE Steel, Sumitomo Metal Industries, the Itochu trading house, the South Korean steel giant Posco and several other Japanese smelters.
Nacional Minerios produces 20 million tonnes of iron ore each year, or 10 per cent of total Japanese annual demand.
Analysts said the deal, which hit the iron ore producers in the middle of a crisis of confidence in commodities markets and at a moment of extreme share price weakness, revealed the level of desperation among Asian steelmakers.
Shares in mining companies have crumbled over the past two days after Rio Tinto admitted what much of the industry had already guessed -- that Chinese demand for iron ore had fallen sharply and that steel mills were suspending production. The looming prospect of prolonged global recession has done little to stop the plunge in commodity indexes.
Analysts in Tokyo said the deal could reshape the global resources scene if similar deals followed. Steelmakers in Japan, Korea, India and China have all been eager to gain some foothold in the resource supply chain.
Motivating the deal, one trading company source said, was the intense competition for iron ore and coking coal that had robbed steelmakers of negotiating strength in price-setting.
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