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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (26735)	12/23/2007 7:58:01 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217591

NZ tycoon Hart Buys Alcoa Units for $2.7 Billion become the world's second-largest drink-carton maker. Last year, Hart bought International Paper Co.'s beverage-packaging unit for $500 million and Neuhausen, Switzerland-based SIG Holding AG for $2 billion. By Dale Crofts and David McIntyre New Zealand's Hart Buys Alcoa Units for $2.7 Billion Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Rank Group Ltd., owned by New Zealand's richest man, Graeme Hart, agreed to buy Alcoa Inc.'s packaging and consumer businesses for $2.7 billion in cash to expand in the U.S. Alcoa expects to sell the consumer and packaging businesses, which last year generated 10 percent of sales and 3 percent of after-tax operating income, by the end of the March, the company said in an e-mailed statement. Hart, 52, will gain control of units including Reynolds Wrap foil in the acquisition. Rank Group, based in Auckland, has made about $7 billion of acquisitions over two years in the U.S, New Zealand and Europe to become the world's second-largest drink-carton maker. Last year, Hart bought International Paper Co.'s beverage-packaging unit for $500 million and Neuhausen, Switzerland-based SIG Holding AG for $2 billion. ``He's certainly building quite a packaging empire,' said Stephen Walker, principal of Walker Capital Management Ltd. in Auckland. ``This extends the scope of the business and will give him some economies of scale. He likes stable cash flow, which is why packaging appeals.' Hart, a former tow-truck driver has an estimated personal wealth of NZ$2.75 billion ($2.1 billion), according to New Zealand's National Business Review 2007 Rich List. His fortune was unchanged from a year earlier and he has topped the list in five of the past six years. Alcoa Better Off Higher raw material costs have hurt profit at Alcoa's packaging unit, with $3.2 billion in sales and 10,000 employees worldwide. The company is focusing on so-called upstream mining and aluminum businesses as demand and prices for the metal rise, stoked by emerging economies spending more on construction. Reynolds Wrap is part of its consumer-products unit. ``Alcoa is better off without packaging; this is a low- margin business,' said Charles Bradford, an analyst at Soleil Securities in New York, in a telephone interview. ``The best returns are in the upstream.' In April, New York-based Alcoa said it planned to consider alternatives for the businesses, which employ about 10,000 people in 22 countries. The company took a third-quarter charge of about $604 million related to the sale of the business. Alcoa failed in a hostile attempt to buy Montreal-based Alcan Inc. in July to head off growing competition from emerging market producers such as United Co. Rusal, the Russian company that is the world's second-largest aluminum producer, after Rio Tinto Ltd. agreed to buy Alcan for $38.1 billion in July. Some analysts have speculated that Alcoa will be more attractive to potential acquirers as it sells less profitable businesses that aren't related to aluminum production. Rio Tinto plans to sell Alcan's packaging and consumer business and has said it may sell the company's engineered products business. Miners, Metals ``We would not be surprised to see M&A speculation rekindle around Alcoa,' John Hill, a metals and mining analyst at Citigroup in San Francisco, wrote in a Dec. 19 note to investors. ``The diversified miners are cash rich and facing a dearth of reinvestment opportunities.' The price of aluminum, the most-traded metal on the London Metal Exchange, has risen 73 percent since 2002 because of rising demand as China boosts investments in its infrastructure. Global use of the metal will rise 10 percent this year, the fastest rate of increase since at least 1980, Rio Tinto's Alcan Inc. unit has said. Alcoa rose 96 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $36.35 in New York Stock Exchange trading. The stock is up 21 percent year to date.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (26735)	12/23/2007 9:15:09 AM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 217591

C2, I get the impression there hasn't really been a lot of damage yet. True enough, but in time the damage will be felt. The effects will be a reduced level of consumer spending and reduced activity in all sectors which depend on real estate for their vitality. This of course is a huge part of the US economy. The effects will be global as the American consumer's purchasing power is an enormous driver of global exports. It will be interesting to observe the reaction of Sovereign Wealth Funds to the bargains the bursting of the bubble is going to present. Their capital injections may very well soften the effects of the bursted bubble. I cannot recall the last time in modern history that nations funded what are in effect hedge funds. Unlike hedge funds, whose goals ae to make money, the objectives of these national funds will be both commercial and political, which will make the future very intereting. I suspect that the countries whose resources and corporations will become the targets of these funds will act politically to prevent the wholesale sell-off of assets. I cannot imagine any country will, for example, allow a member of the People's Army to sit on the board of ExxonMobil. I am exaggerting, of course, but you get my meaning. Big Ben, true to word, has loaded the helicopters and Uncle Al KBE has even cut right to the chase and said to issue bank notes to home owners. Central bankers around the world are manning the pumps. Remember at all times that Warren Buffett has said that derivatives are the financial weapons of mass destruction and that the US$ .5 Trillion injection by the ECB was in response to solvency issues. Also remember that a senior Fed official has remarked negatively about solvency. It is quite possible that the financial crisis is much worse than it appears. Simply dropping dollars on it is a temporary solution akin to giving the drug addict more heroin. The piper will be paid. Your regared for Greenspan is a mystery to me. He is singlehandedly responsible for a great deal of our present fix. The increased liquidity he injected into the financail system led directly to the real estate bubble. His positive comments about adjustable rate mortgages were over the top. There was also a failure/corruption of the rating agencies and a complete failure of regulation over the financial frauds who packaged the mortgages for sale. A perfect storm of greed and foolishness.