_{DEAL OF THE MONTH}

The Second Largest Mining Deal Ever

Some deals just rock don't they? Put on your hard hats because today we are talking about AngloAmerican's proposed $50 billion merger of equals with Teck Resources.

If you’re not deep in the mining world, here’s some context. In late 2023, Teck sold its coal business to Glencore for $9 billion to focus on becoming a pure-play base metals producer with its flagship QB2 project.

But it overspent on QB2 and has struggled to hit promised operating results.

Anglo, meanwhile, has had its own drama. In mid-2025, BHP (the world’s largest miner) made an unsolicited $39 billion bid for the company. Before that, in late 2024, Anglo sold its Australian coal operations to Peabody for $2.7 billion… only to have one of those underground mines catch fire shortly after. (From someone who’s been around the industry: coal catching fire underground is as bad as it sounds.)

So with the context set, now let's fast forward to today: both companies have struggled to find their place in an evolving landscape.

Businesses that were funded by free cashflow from highly profitable coal businesses are now looking for ways to grow.

Since the promised share price bump and re-rating the bankers swore would happen when coal was sold off was less promising than expected, Anglo and Teck are making one last ditch effort to compete with BHP and Glencore by combining.

The deal will be an at-the-market merger of equals implemented by a plan of arrangement. Anglo shareholders will end up with 62% of the company, and Teck shareholders with 38%. The primary listing will shift to London, marking a big change for Teck, one of Canada's largest public companies by market cap.

On a pro forma basis, Anglo Teck would become the 5th largest copper producer in the world. But, as I said in the introduction, just because Goldman tells you that exposure to a sexy commodity will reward you, doesn't make it true.

Time to start refreshing your LinkedIn; the deal promises nearly $800 million in pre-tax annual synergies, including $210 million from trimming corporate fat. Having worked with some of these companies in the past, I can confirm there is a significant amount of bloating in these organizations, but $210 million is a lot of headcount reductions…

To assess the share prices, it’s also necessary to look at copper prices, given their commodity exposure.

Teck has lagged the metal due to QB2 overspending and weak production, while Anglo has outperformed thanks to its coal exit and the BHP bid.

Zooming in though, it doesn’t take a mining engineering degree to figure out that Teck and Anglo may have hit the motherlode when they announced the deal, with both companies up 15% month to date, in contrast to copper’s 2%.

On balance, this is one of the largest deals of 2025 and the second largest mining deal ever. Even if this isn't your field, it is interesting to see consolidation taking place in a space that is relatively overlooked, especially considering the drama from both of these companies recently.

As the world turns to look towards green energy and decarbonization, we will need more mined commodities, not less. Yet the giant miners continue to lag in the capital markets. They just don't have the rocket ship growth stories like Nvidia or OpenAI. As the industry consolidates, it will be interesting to see if these companies start seeing stock price moves outside of just swings in commodity pricing.

_{NEWS ROUNDUP}

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_{STRATEGIC DEAL OF THE MONTH}

EchoStar Blasts Off

Now that we’ve spent some time in the dirt, it’s time to look to the stars.

We are blasting off with a SpaceX’s $17 billion acquisition of EchoStar’s AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses. $8.5 billion will be paid in SpaceX equity, with the balance in cash.

EchoStar has been on a divestiture streak, but that has allowed them to narrow their business focus, while still retaining ~45 MHz of spectrum after the deals.

Also, much to the pleasure of the shareholders, the sale will allow for significant deleveraging, with $2 billion of the SpaceX proceeds earmarked for interest repayments.

On a strategic level, the deals allow EchoStar to refocus on becoming an asset-light company rather than an asset-rich (read: CapEx heavy) operator. Said differently, they want to be a tech company not an infrastructure play.

EchoStar has had quite the share price run, up 179% over the past year.

The biggest jump was the AT&T deal, announced in late August; however, the peak is actually when the SpaceX deal was announced, and the share price has fallen ~13% since announcement.

Ultimately, who knows what Elon will do with this one. What also makes it interesting, is now EchoStar becomes a public proxy for SpaceX equity as a majority of the consideration was paid in scrip rather than cash.

Whether that has an impact on EchoStar’s share price remains to be seen, but I’m sure some research analyst is working hard on that look through analysis right about now.

_{INT’L DEAL OF THE MONTH}

TikTok’s Final Countdown

With the clock ticking, a deal to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations seems imminent.

While terms have not been disclosed, it is rumored that after a “productive call” with Xi Jinping and President Trump, the US is near a deal to acquire 80% of TikTok’s US business, leaving the remaining 20% for Chinese investors.

The US consortium will be led by Oracle, Andreesen Horowitz, and Silver Lake.

While the full investor consortium is not yet finalized, it is clear that Oracle will be in the mix as they will be the ones storing the data from US users.

While the terms of this deal aren’t yet disclosed, it shows a common theme in the Trump administration: expansion of their equity holdings. The Administration took a golden share in the Nippon Steel x US Steel deal (here) and has been actively trying to expand the US government’s equity holdings through a variety of deals (Intel and Lithium American - rumored)

Whether or not the US government will get a piece of this one is unknown (yet), but it is safe to guess that they probably will want a piece of it.

Agree or disagree with the political angle, this will be a fun one to watch. The valuation is likely to be steep ($14B?), and the intense political scrutiny means regulators and legal details will play a huge role in how it unfolds. Hopefully, both sides have decent counsel on deck.