Lynas Rare Earths’ second-quarter revenue rises nearly 4%
Its total rare earth oxide for the second quarter was 2,617 metric tons, compared to 2,722 tons reported last quarter.
Rio Tinto Group and Glencore Plc have been discussing combining their businesses, according to people familiar with the matter, in what could result in the mining industry’s largest-ever deal.
Rio and Glencore have recently held early-stage talks about a deal, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. It’s unclear whether the talks are still live.
Rio Tinto is the world’s second-biggest miner, with a market value of about $103 billion at the close of trading in London on Thursday, while Glencore was valued at about $55 billion. Combining the two businesses would potentially create a behemoth to leapfrog longstanding industry leader BHP Group, which is worth about $126 billion.
Representatives for both Rio and Glencore declined to comment. Rio’s American depositary receipts declined while Glencore jumped.
The mining industry has been galvanized by a wave of dealmaking in the past couple of years, driven largely by a desire by the biggest producers to expand in copper — a metal central to the world’s decarbonization efforts.
The mining industry has been galvanized by a wave of dealmaking in the past couple of years, driven largely by a desire by the biggest producers to expand in copper
Both Glencore and Rio own some of the best copper mines in the world. However, Rio — like BHP — still depends heavily on iron ore to drive its profits, at a time when China’s decades-long construction boom is drawing to an end and the iron ore market appears headed for an extended period of weakness.
Glencore, which previously proposed a merger with Rio in 2014, has been one of the most aggressive dealmakers in the sector. Its former CEO Ivan Glasenberg, who spearheaded the earlier approach to Rio, still owns almost 10% of the company.
Glencore made an unsuccessful bid to buy Teck Resources Ltd. in 2023 but settled instead for the smaller company’s coal unit. BHP last year tried to buy Anglo American Plc in a $49 billion deal — forcing Anglo to accelerate an overhaul of its business as part of its defense strategy — before eventually walking away empty handed.
Buying Glencore would give Rio a stake in the Collahuasi mine in Chile, one of the richest deposits, that the company has coveted for more than a decade.
Glencore also operates one of the world’s biggest commodity trading businesses — buying, selling and shipping huge volumes of metals, coal and oil.
A combination with Rio would raise questions about Glencore’s coal mining assets, which is a business that Rio exited several years ago. Glencore is also the world’s biggest shipper of thermal coal and a top producer of coking coal.
(By Archie Hunter, Thomas Biesheuvel and Dinesh Nair)
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