The Week in Breakingviews

For the first eight decades of its existence, there was nothing very English or American about Anglo American. The mining group was founded in Johannesburg in 1917 by Ernest Oppenheimer, a German emigre; its name reflected the origins of the capital that financed his new business. More than a century on, the South African influence remains strong. But the outcome of this week’s cheeky?31-billion-pound proposal?from Australian mining giant BHP?will reveal a lot about the true centres of financial and commercial power in the 21st century.

Anglo American expanded beyond its home market years ago. In 1998 the company merged with Luxembourg-based Minorco, which controlled most of its international operations, and shifted its main stock market listing to London. (Back then, the City was still a magnet for overseas companies). Julian Ogilvie Thompson, Anglo’s chairman at the time, noted the historic moment. “What we are marking today is the end of the financial structures that were imposed on us by apartheid,” he told a budding reporter.

Oppenheimer made his fortune in diamonds; the modern Anglo American is attracting interest mainly for its copper, nickel and manganese - base metals?which are crucial to the energy transition. Governments will have a say in any takeover. South Africa’s mining minister has declared his country’s experience with BHP as “not positive”. Chile and Peru, home to some of Anglo’s mines, may weigh in. And China, the world’s largest consumer of copper, may be uneasy about consolidation among suppliers of the red metal.?

Mining is by its nature a global business. As Oppenheimer showed back in 1917, the buyers and financiers of stuff that comes out of the ground tend to be a long way from where it’s dug up. Yet in an era where bureaucrats increasingly have the upper hand over bankers, big mining deals look set to be even harder to predict - and harder to pull off - than before.

What else I learned from Breakingviews this week:

1. The different ways in which private equity moguls carve up their profits among staff.
2. Alphabet and Meta will both invest at least $40 billion this year - twice as much as in 2021.
3. The median Japanese buyout returns 2.8 times the investor’s capital, compared to 2 times in the United States.
4. Tesla suffered its first year-on-year decline in revenue since the pandemic.
5. Fast-food chain Jimmy John’s used to require staff to sign non-compete clauses stopping them from making sandwiches for rivals within a three-mile radius.