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Gold/Mining/Energy : BHP -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Aurum who wrote (18)	12/2/1997 8:31:00 AM
From: Aurum	Respond to of 87

A copy of an article (The Melbourne Age. 23 September) regarding BHP. BHP stems slide but loses top spot to NAB By MALCOLM MAIDEN The plunge in BHP's share price halted yesterday, but the group was overtaken anyway by National Australia Bank as Australia's most highly valued company, a situation that will add to the pressure on BHP directors at today's annual meeting. After trading as low as $15.53 during the day, BHP struggled to close eight cents higher at $15.78 a share as concerns continued about cost overruns, falling metal prices and the group's failure so far to show how it will regain the ground it has lost. BHP's chairman, Mr Jerry Ellis, will field a raft of questions from shareholders at the annual meeting in Brisbane. Shareholders are reviewing a period that saw BHP's $3.2-billion takeover of the Magma copper group go badly wrong, cost overruns of up to $1 billion on a Western Australian iron project, and the departure of top executives. The Australian Shareholders Association has already sent a lengthy list of questions to Mr Ellis. Issues raised in the letter include the amount BHP has sunk in projects not yet generating income - $7.5 billion, or 27 per cent of BHP's total investment in non-current assets by the ASA's reckoning - the $2 billion in write-offs the group has taken between 1995 and 1997, and the amount being paid to senior BHP executives. BHP's share price has fallen sharply after last week's revelations about the debacle on the hot briquetted iron ore project in WA. The stock, however, was already in trouble because of lower than expected earnings, the initial news last month about the cost blowout in WA, and BHP's earlier decision to write down the value of Magma by $550 million. The Magma writedown was an acknowledgement that BHP paid too much for the US-based mining and smelting operation. Yesterday's market confirmed NAB as the biggest company in Australia by market capitalisation. NAB's share price rose by 35 cents to $22.25, valuing the banking group at $32 billion, slightly above BHP's market capitalisation of $31.8 billion.