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Anglo American has insisted its £405 million bid for Sirius Minerals is “fair and reasonable” after a hedge fund joined small shareholders in pushing for a higher offer.

Mark Cutifani, chief executive, claimed the deal would allow the North Yorkshire fertiliser mine to “play a key role in the concept of the northern powerhouse”, calling this “the biggest benefit for everyone”.

Speaking a day after Odey Asset Management said that the 5.5p-a-share offer was not fair value and that Anglo would be willing to bid significantly more, Mr Cutifani said the level of the offer “takes into account the future investment needs and the project needs”.

The deal is also facing opposition from some of Sirius’s tens of thousands of retail shareholders, many of whom live close to the project and are facing heavy losses on their investments.

Mr Cutifani said: “We understand how important this project is to the community of North Yorkshire. If we are successful, we bring certainty that at the moment isn’t there for the project and the community.”

He urged shareholders to read the statement by Sirius’s chairman, which set out a stark choice between the Anglo offer or Sirius likely going bust within weeks, wiping out investments altogether.

Anglo American, which is listed in London and Johannesburg, is one of the world’s biggest mining groups producing commodities including coal, copper, iron ore, platinum and diamonds.

The Sirius project involves mining polyhalite fertiliser from beneath the North York Moors near Whitby.

This morning Anglo reported a 9 per cent rise in underlying ebitda to $10 billion, aided by much higher prices for iron ore and palladium, offset in part by lower prices for coal and diamonds. It also benefited from the ramp up of operations from its Minas Rio iron ore mine in Brazil, which was shut for most of 2018, but was hit by weaker demand for diamonds. The results were better than expected, sending shares up 1.3 per cent in early trading. Net profits were flat at $3.5 billion.

While other global miners have warned over the impact of the coronavirus, which is knocking China’s demand for raw materials, Mr Cutifani said that Anglo expected it to be “mostly a short term issue” and said it was “less reliant on China than most of our competitors”. However, its diamonds business De Beers was expected to feel the effects as there “aren’t too many people wandering through jewellery stores at the moment”.

Natural resources companies are under pressure to take action to reduce their carbon footprints, including the “scope 3” emissions from customers using their products. Glencore said this week that it projected a 30 per cent drop in its scope 3 emissions by 2035 and BP last week set out an “ambition” to cut its carbon footprint to “net zero” by 2050.

Asked why Anglo had not set scope 3 emissions reductions targets, Mr Cutifani said it did not want to “throw a date or target out there” without understanding the consequen

Mind you I think we are going to have a few big news days before then ?

Not sure what but still waiting for Polygon to show their hand yet ?

I'm feeling very nervous already I'm going to be a gibbering wreck in 12 days time ....

http://www.fundsirius.com

Fred

Regarding the vote
All I can say is I’ve accepted I won’t get the one holder one vote court vote round one as it were !!!

I may be wrong but it does seem to me that the vote where NO of shares counted in the 75% vote through your platform is the “biggy “ and at least that way all your shares are counted.
Btw we can succeed by Winn the second vote.
Keep trying Fred but at least get your vote in ( with hl at least you can if you want change your vote)

Ffc

Scotman I can’t disagree with any of that
Whilst I’m angry I too don’t believe it n conspiracy theories or that he doesn’t hate the situation we are in but I have to say for a long time I’ve wondered what Staley does and I do believe if the aal deal is voted against it does to me look like we need a change at the top. That said I would still like to at least here if CF thinks he should stay , why and what he would do ?
I personally am just as fed up with the silence up now as much as the failure to get funding.
So for me I want this ridiculously low offer and aal thrown out then the dust to settle with Qatar giving us breathing space then dialogue with the bod as to a way forward and by who

Regards

Ffc

Birdie ??????

Should read bridge

It’s a bloody Albatross we need actually lol

Bloody predictive text

LTV

That’s what they will have to do now that a NO vote is on the cards I agree.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing though. I’m sure now they wish they had taken the oversubscribed 15p open offers now but we are where we are
You all know how I’m voting and if we do kick this ridiculous offer in to touch let’s see what they come up with but it’s my guess the first thing will be a hundred million birdie from Qatar

I agree with the sentiment LTV but if they get away with it you can be damn sure he'll be getting plenty of pats on the back from his own shareholders ..
Although I do get why we are trying for two years up front ( wouldn't really fancy going through all this every year until production)

Regards

ffc

Scroll down click accept and watch why they want us
All for 5.5p ?????

https://www.angloamerican.com/offer

https://www.angloamerican.com/offer

Scotman

You want CF & TS to stand down

I’ve been wondering if CF has buried Tomas Staley under his patio ? Where T F has he been the last 18 months -2years ?????
How much has he cost us in income let alone him part responsible for funding !

YES CHRIS we are very very very angry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pviL8rZHFvk&feature=emb_rel_pause

Sirius Minerals "is quality" says Anglo

https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/913316/morning-report-lloyds-ends-ppi-headache-sirius-minerals--is-quality--says-anglo-913316.html

Sorry Max
you put it better though

I particularly liked the suggestion that Polygone joined forces with Odey ???
Trouble is I want funding not one and a half extra pennies

That's Two articles in the Business pages so someone thinks it's getting interesting ??

www.fundsirius.com

Mr Steel is now teasing Anglo, claiming it would make its bid “final” if it wasn’t leaving room for a bump. Anglo says that’s simply tactical: keen to avoid Apollo’s woes over plastic maker RPC, where its “final” offer was gazumped by a last-minute interloper. But say another Sirius investor, Polygon, which has built a 9.83 per cent stake via CFDs, joined Odey in pushing for Anglo to dig deeper. Convert their holdings to voting stakes, add some disaffected retail punters and Anglo could have a problem. True, the risk is that a failed bid tips Sirius into bankruptcy, so wiping out the shareholders — potentially allowing Anglo to buy the business from the administrators. But Mr Cutifani would prefer to avoid that mess. This bid’s not over yet.

A
Hedge your bets over Sirius bid
Alistair Osborne
Thursday February 20 2020, 12.01am, The Times
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Crispin Odey is known for many things: being the Brexiteer hedge fund supremo who shorted the pound; sharing a reputed £775 million fortune with his investment manager wife Nichola Pease; having a car-crash bet against Tesla shares.

But becoming the new best friend of 85,000 retail punters, deep in the fertiliser at Sirius Minerals? What, Mayfair hedgie Crispin? You cannot be Sirius. Well, think again, because that’s precisely the impression Odey Asset Management wants to give with its spot of “bumpitrage” at the Woodsmith mine.

Odey’s just taken a 1.29 per cent stake in Sirius, mainly via contracts for difference: the cue for announcing that Anglo-American’s £405 million rescue bid “does not represent fair value” for investors. It finds the 5.5p-a-share offer “unjust”, reckoning 7p-plus would be nearer the mark: a point made in a letter to Anglo boss Mark Cutifani and Sirius chief Chris Fraser. And, yes, it’s a bit late for Mr Odey to have discovered the pretty money pit on the North York Moors. But, as noted here on Saturday, here was a situation ripe for hedgie brinkmanship.

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The deal is via a scheme of arrangement, with the vote on March 3. And, as the prospectus makes clear, for the bid to go through it requires “the approval of the majority in number” of voting shareholders “representing not less than 75 per cent in value” of the votes. Retail shareholders own half the stock. And, even allowing for much of that being via platforms such as Hargreaves Lansdown, for this bid they have unusual clout.

To boot, some are so livid with Mr Fraser for enticing them down the mine at as much as 40p a share that they’ve vowed to vote the deal down to spite him. His response? That if they do, Sirius will go bust. Similarly, Mr Cutifani insists he will not be raising his bid: every 1p on the price adds $100 million to Anglo’s bill. Neither are Sirius shares signalling a bump: a below-offer 5.12p. And why should he be worried about Odey? It actually owns just 0.21 per cent.

Still, with two weeks to go to the vote, you’d expect them to say that. And Odey does have form. Its letter was written by Henry Steel, famous for his rancorous exit from Rio Tinto. He departed nicely clued up on its Oyu Tolgoi mine project in Mongolia: info he used at Odey to successfully short the shares of the Canadian-listed vehicle, Turquoise Hill, via which Rio held its stake in the mine. He also banded together with other hedgies to force Barrick Gold to up its bid for Acacia Mining.

Mr Steel is now teasing Anglo, claiming it would make its bid “final” if it wasn’t leaving room for a bump. Anglo says that’s simply tactical: keen to avoid Apollo’s woes over plastic maker RPC, where

Some retail investors have suggested that they are willing to lose everything to spite Sirius management, while others are desperately seeking to find alternative solutions. These include a group running a Fund Sirius campaign to try to demonstrate to the company that the £460 million it needs for the next stage of the project could be raised in the market through a bond issue. Yashmin Ismail, the group’s founder, said that this week it had secured expressions of interest from people willing to put in about £9 million.