BHP, Rio Tinto: The Deal is Still Dead (BHP, RTP)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Broken_merger_torn_moneyWe’ve already conducted the post-mortem on the failed bid by Australia’s BHP Billiton (NYSE:BHP) for Britain’s Rio Tinto (NYSE:RTP). There are just a couple of details worth noting.

First, there was no chance the deal would have made it past Europeanregulators unless BHP was willing to sell off some of its aluminum andiron ore assets. BHP was willing to do that, but had determined that itwas unlikely to find buyers in today’s tough credit market. Nobody waslikely to pay cash, and shares in some other company were notattractive either.

Second, at its peak, the deal was worth about $147 billion. Today it’svalued at $62 billion. Why buy something that is dropping in valueeveryday? This deal was never[http://a673b.bigscoots-temp.com/2008/08/australian-mine.html] a winner.

Paul Ausick
November 25, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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