Deals
Record Coal Premium Turning Into Bargain as Deals Sour: Real M&A
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Even after the biggest wave of coal-mining deals left every buyer this year with losses, a 153-year-old Japanese trading house is betting it can profit by paying the industry’s largest premium for Grande Cache Coal Corp.
Marubeni Corp., with businesses ranging from copper to dress shirts and natural-gas tankers, and China’s Winsway Coking Coal Holdings Ltd. agreed yesterday to acquire the Calgary-based coal producer for C$1 billion ($1 billion). The C$10-a-share offer is more than double Grande Cache’s 20-day average and three times higher than the premium paid by Alpha Natural Resources Inc., which plunged 58 percent after agreeing to buy Massey Energy Co. in this year’s biggest coal deal, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.