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From the
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pril
2007
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Phelps Dodge
(Phoenix, Arizona), the world’s second-largest
copper producer, will be acquired by
Freeport-McMoRan
Copper and Gold
, a smaller rival, in a cash and stock deal worth
$25.9 billion. The chairman and chief executive of Phelps Dodge,
J Steven Whisler, said the two companies had discussed a possible
merger for about a decade. The premium of about 33 per cent
offered by Freeport-McMoRan, Mr Whisler said, was a major
factor in Phelps Dodge’s decision to end its 172-year history as an
independent company.
Freeport-McMoRan, based in New Orleans, Louisiana, is the
world’s lowest-cost copper producer. Best known for its Grasberg
mine in West Papua, the company is the largest taxpayer to the
Indonesian government. The transaction with Phelps Dodge is the
latest in a series of mining and metals consolidations involving US
companies. If approved by shareholders, it would create the world’s
largest copper producer and the largest mining company based in
North America.
Spotlight on: Canada
New US passport rules: Canada’s business
travellers and tourism to suffer
All airline passengers landing in the US are now required to present
a passport, not just the driver’s license and birth certificate that
once sufficed for Canadians crossing the border and for US citizens
returning from Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean.
On 23 January, when the tougher US rules took effect, passport
offices reported applications up 53 per cent in the United States and
33 per cent in Canada from the previous year.
The tighter border controls being instituted five years after the
9/11 terrorist attacks will be extended to the busy US land borders
with Canada and Mexico by 1 June 2009. Meanwhile, the new
rules on air travel are causing enough problems for the passport
services. An official of the US State Department estimated that it
will issue 16 million passports this year, up from 7 million four years
ago. A spokesman for Passport Canada said that its offices were
swamped.
Canadian business executives are predictably unhappy about the
confusion and delays to be expected with the new regulations. But
the immediate big loser will be the $50 billion Canadian tourism
industry, already suffering from a 28 per cent drop in visitors from
the US over five years.
Writing from Toronto in the
Washington Post
, Doug Struck noted
that fewer Americans are coming to Canada largely because of the
increase in value of the Canadian dollar, which has erased cross-
border shopping bargains. A representative of the Canadian duty-
free shops at the land borders told him that, even before the new
passport requirement took effect, high gasoline prices, the epidemic
in 2003 of the viral illness SARS, increased security, and confusion
over the border-crossing rules had all hurt business. (
‘Canadians
fear fallout of US passport rules’
13 January).