This has been an odd year for mining companies, and Linklaters has been in the middle of much of the shenanigans. The oddest affair of the year is, of course, reserved for the Rio Tinto espionage case.
But as far as transactions go, there was lots of flirting, and some light petting, but little consummation. At least when Linklaters was involved.
A quarter trillion dollars’ worth of deals that went south, after the jump.
Last November, Linklaters client Rio Tinto was left at the altar by BHP Billiton, in what would have been a $147 billion merger of the two Anglo-Aussie companies. Richard Godden and James Inglis led the “defense” of the half-assed hostile takeover.
In June, Rio Tinto spurned the Chinese government’s proposed $19.5 billion investment, which many believe led to the espionage arrests. Godden and Inglis were in charge on this one, too. Instead, the company was going to raise capital by forming a JV with BHP Billiton and a $15.2 billion stock offering.
Well, now the marketing piece of that JV isn’t going to happen, either.
So Rio Tinto can’t get a deal done with Linklaters – BHP Billiton walks away from a full-on acquisition of Rio Tinto, which then says “thanks but no thanks” to Chinalco’s money, and gets blocked on an output JV with BHP Billiton.
It wasn’t all bad news for Linklaters and mining deals, though. In January, Linklaters represented the underwriters on Swiss copper miner Xstrata’s GBP 4.1 billion rights offering. That cash was supposed to be used to pay down debt and purchase coal assets in Colombia. Charlie Jacobs and John Lane led the engagement.
But even Xstrata couldn’t avoid the jinx. Xstrata, again represented by Linklaters, has finally pulled the plug on its proposed merger-of-equals with Anglo American. That would have created a $94 billion company. David Cheyne and Clodagh Hayes reportedly handled that one for the firm.
By our count, that’s $267 billion of deals that didn’t close for Linklaters in the past year. Hopefully, they weren’t counting on success fees.
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