Brawn raid

6 August 2008 By John Foley Follow @johnsfoley

The metals giant has bypassed the platinum miner s board with a hostile cash bid, and a dawn raid to boot. The scarcity of Lonmin s assets and its depressed shares explain the aggressive approach and its timing. Lonmin will struggle to repel this assault.

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Xstrata has made a hostile cash offer for Lonmin, valuing the UKlisted platinum miner at £33.00 a share, or £5bn ($10bn). The AngloSwiss metals group said it had bought 8% of Lonmin's shares between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning.

Xstrata also revealed ebitda of $5.7bn for the first half of the year, in line with consensus estimates. It said it had reached agreements with most of its customers to supply hard coking coal for $362 per tonne, 277% above last year's price.

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