BHP Group has made and quickly abandoned a renewed takeover approach for Anglo American, testing but ultimately reinforcing the London miner’s $40 billion merger with Teck Resources.
The latest overture came just weeks before a December 9 shareholder vote on the Anglo-Teck combination into a copper-focused group worth more than $60 billion, and against a backdrop of Ottawa demanding stronger commitments on executive and management jobs at a proposed Vancouver headquarters.
According to people familiar with the matter, BHP’s new proposal to Anglo was a mix of cash and stock and landed only “in recent days.” Anglo, with a market value of about £31.9 billion or $41.8 billion, disclosed the approach to Teck over the weekend in line with deal terms that allow either party to consider unsolicited proposals and terminate in the event of a superior offer.
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Teck itself currently trades at around a $19 billion market value and is central to Canada’s ambition to anchor a critical minerals champion at home.
The move was short lived. In an update, BHP said that “following preliminary discussions” with the Anglo American board it is no longer in talks about a combination of the two companies.
The new approach followed BHP’s failed 2024 bid, when the world’s largest miner tried to buy Anglo for about $49 billion through a complex deal that required Anglo to spin off majority stakes in two South African miners. Anglo repeatedly rejected that offer as too complex and undervaluing the business, then rushed out a restructuring plan that CEO Duncan Wanblad argued would deliver better shareholder returns.
Since then Anglo has exited its South African platinum business and is working on divesting coal and diamonds, leaving a cleaner core metals portfolio that is more digestible to a buyer such as BHP.
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People familiar with the situation say the latest BHP proposal was structured in a simpler and more straightforward way than last year, reflecting lessons from the five week public battle that ended with BHP walking away. Yet valuation dynamics have moved against any deal. Since those talks collapsed, Anglo’s shares have risen 11% in London trading while BHP has fallen 10% in Australia, widening the exchange ratio.
For BHP and CEO Mike Henry, the episode underlines how constrained the company is in pursuing copper growth even with a market value above $130 billion. The group already faces a mounting dispute over iron ore sales to its most important customer, China, while people close to the company expect Henry could hand over to a successor after six years in the role next year. Any perception of stretching the balance sheet or repeating past M&A mistakes would likely meet fierce investor resistance, even if Anglo’s copper footprint looks strategically attractive.
Teck’s own disclosures show how crowded the bidding lane has become. In a recent filing, Teck revealed that while negotiating the Anglo deal it held on and off talks starting in May 2023 with an unidentified “Party X,” which people familiar with the matter identify as Vale Base Metals, part of Vale. Those discussions stalled repeatedly over valuation and governance considerations and ultimately broke down last May, after which Teck pressed ahead with Anglo and announced their merger in September.
The miner had already rebuffed an unsolicited $23 billion offer from Glencore, which it deemed inadequate, before turning to the Anglo negotiations. The company’s latest filing situates the Anglo and Vale approaches within a wider wave of deal making that has included BHP’s earlier Anglo bid and talks between Rio Tinto and Glencore, underscoring how copper, zinc and iron ore portfolios are being shuffled among a small group of global majors.
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