China’s imports of steelmaking material coking coal is expected to jump about 47% from a year earlier to 50 million tons in 2010, Shen Jinming, deputy general manager of the Shanxi Coking Coal Group, has said. China’s consumption of coking coal is expected to grow 11% this year to about 600 million tons.
The Hong Kong listing of Russian aluminium producer UC Rusal Ltd. opens up a compelling option for Russian companies that have traditionally sought to go public in London, Rusal’s deputy chief executive Artem Volynets has said. Seeking a Hong Kong listing, he added, “is a no-brainer decision” for Russian resource and raw-materials companies, pointing to Hong Kong’s deep liquidity, its proximity to China’s economic growth and the promise of richer valuations.
Managers of bankrupt oil giant OAO Yukos have won injunctions in U.S. and British courts seeking the seizure of property from Russian oil major OAO Rosneft—a sign that Yukos’s legal battle against the Russian state is far from over. The injunctions were part of efforts to enforce a ruling by a Dutch court last year that ordered Rosneft to repay a $389-million debt, plus interest and penalties, to Yukos Capital S.a.r.l. Rosneft took on the liability when it acquired Yukos’s oil-producing assets in a government auction in 2004.
As China’s worst drought in a century wreaks havoc across southwestern China, one of Beijing’s leading environmentalists has pushed for stronger rules forcing listed companies to be more transparent about industrial emissions and their environmental track records.
Debt-laden Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska is planning to list a power firm in Hong Kong, banking sources said, weeks after his aluminum company RUSAL’s IPO left investors nursing hefty losses. January’s initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong of around a tenth of RUSAL -- the world’s top aluminum firm in which Deripaska holds a major stake -- raised $2.2 billion to pay down debt. But its shares then dropped around 22 percent from the IPO price because of global market jitters, renewed investor aversion to risky assets.
Even as Russian nickel producer Norilsk Nickel confirmed that it was withdrawing from its joint-venture with Rio Tinto, in order to “concentrate its efforts on current projects”, a spokesperson for Rio said that the two parties were in “discussions” and that the JV remained in place for the time being.
Data released in February show that China’s commodity imports slumped in January after a surprising surge in December, as sea ice disrupted shipping and the country began to tighten monetary policy, spooking markets that had relied on its largesse in 2009.
China’s appetite for further gold purchases may be limited, according to the country’s chief foreign-exchange regulator who has also offered soothing words about China’s role as an investor in U.S. Treasurys. “Gold is not a bad asset, but currently a few factors limit our ability to increase foreign-exchange investment in gold,” said Yi Gang, director of China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange.
UC RUSAL, the world’s largest aluminium producer, plans to secure between five and eight major Chinese buyers on long-term contracts to carve a larger share of the world’s biggest market for the metal. UC RUSAL, fresh from Russia’s biggest-ever private sector debt restructuring, also plans to restart 100,000 tons of idle capacity by the end of the first quarter as global consumption enters the second phase of recovery, a senior official said.
Chinese companies are snapping up natural resources firms across the globe and picking over the carcasses of car marquees laid low by the financial crisis. The value of Chinese outbound M&A, at $42.6 billion last year, was below a record $3 billion from 2008, but nonetheless accounted for China’s highest share yet of the global total at 7.5 percent.