BHP Billiton

BHP Billiton is an Australian- British mining group and, with Vale and Rio Tinto Group is among the world's three largest mining companies.

Economic activities since 2001

BHP Billiton, listed on the stock exchanges in New York, London, Sydney and Johannesburg, formed by the merger of the British Billiton and the Australian BHP (Broken Hill Proprietary Company) in 2001. Australian company holds a 60 percent stake and the involved British holding company 40 percent. The dual- listed company structure is registered as BHP Billiton Limited in the Commercial Register in Melbourne and as BHP Billiton Plc in the Commercial Register in London. Melbourne is headquarters of BHP Billiton Limited and the global headquarters of the BHP Billiton Group, London is the headquarters of BHP Billiton Plc.

In June 2005, BHP Billiton took over the Australian mining company WMC Resources for 7.3 billion U.S. dollars.

BHP Billiton is active in 25 countries. These include Australia, Canada, Colombia, Chile and Suriname. In the Iraqi oil field Halfaja west of Najaf BHP Billiton has already invested $ 2 billion dollars and heard so ahead of rivals ENI, Shell and Repsol among the largest investors in the torn by civil war and insurgency against the American occupation troops land. On the company's website this circumstance, however, is not mentioned.

On 1st November 2007, the company Rio Tinto Group made ​​an offer, which provided for a share of Rio Tinto against three of BHP Billiton to swap. Rio Tinto rejected the offer at first. Beginning of February 2008 BHP increased the offer to 3.4 of its own shares for a share of Rio Tinto. The total amount of the offer thus amounted to 147.4 billion U.S. dollars ( 100.6 billion euros ). At the British- Australian company and the Chinese group Chinalco and the U.S. company Alcoa are interested. In the event of a successful takeover would create a giant with an estimated 350 billion U.S. dollars market value. The transaction would be the second largest in history after the Mannesmann takeover by Vodafone in 2000. On November 25, 2008, however, the Group announced that the deal had burst because of falling commodity prices.

BHP and its competitors Arcelor Mittal negotiate in January 2010 by a merger of the iron ore activities in Liberia and Guinea. Through such joint ventures, the competitiveness of the iron ore and infrastructure sectors in the two countries should be strengthened.

History

Broken Hill Proprietary Company ( BHP)

The Broken Hill Proprietary Company or BHP was founded in 1885, and operation of silver and lead mines in Broken Hill in western New South Wales, Australia. In 1915 the company also began with the steel processing, the production of cities were mainly located in Newcastle, New South Wales, with offices in Melbourne, Victoria.

BHP was also known by the nickname of the Big Australian. The company started in the 60s with the search for oil, with discoveries in Bass Strait ( strait between Tasmania and Australia). The oil took over time an ever more important role in the Group.

Billiton

Billiton was named in the founding in 1860, the Dutch East Indies Billiton ( Belitung today in Indonesia).

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