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  3. First it was metals, now it is the companies that mine them. In May prices for

First it was metals, now it is the companies that mine them. In May prices for

游客2023-12-16  25
问题   First it was metals, now it is the companies that mine them. In May prices for copper, nickel and other metals rose to record levels, although they have since fallen a bit. Now three mining firms are proposing the most expensive merger in the industry’s history. The $ 40 billion deal, in which an American company, Phelps Dodge, plans to take over two Canadian ones, Inco and Faleonbridge, would create the world’s biggest producer of nickel, the number two in copper, and the fifth-ranked mining firm overall. The records may not stop there:two other mining firms, Xstrata and Teck Cominco, had previously bid for Falconbridge and Inco respectively, and could make further offers.
  Soaring commodities prices have left mining firms flush with cash and keen to expand. One Way would be to search for more metal in the ground, instead of on the stockmarket. But organic growth is expensive at the moment; as firms rush to increase their output to take advantage of high prices, every conceivable input, from engineers to mining trucks’ huge tyres, is in desperately short supply. Developing new mines is also slow. Mining executives worry that projects that get the go ahead when prices are high will not look so attractive when the next slump comes.
  That could be true of the proposed merger too, of course. Phelps Dodge offered a premium of 23% over the price of Inco’s shares and 12% over Falconbridge’s. Those shares, in turn, have been rising for several years along with the firms’ wares--nickel, for the most part, at Inco, and nickel and copper at Falconbridge.
  The bosses of the firms insist that the mark-up is justified, for several reasons. For one thing, they reckon they can squeeze savings of $ 900m a year out of the combined entity by 2009, by sharing equipment and personnel among adjacent mines, for example, and pooling their marketing staff. More importantly, they argue that the size and diversity of the new company will make it less vulnerable to mining’s painful cycles, and so more attractive to investors.
  The biggest and most diversified mining companies, such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, do boast higher share valuations. They produce everything from aluminium to zircon, and so are less susceptible to flutuations in the price of any particular metal. By the same logic, the more mines a firm is running or developing, and the more countries it operates in, the less risk each individual project poses to profits.
  The merged trio will certainly have a broader geographical spread, with mines in five continents. But its main projects, in stable places like the United States, Canada and Chile, never seemed that risky in the first place. Furthermore, despite having sidelines in cobalt and molybdenum, the new firm’s fortunes will depend chiefly on the price of copper and nickel--two of most volatile metals of late.
  Some analysts mutter that Phelps Dodge embarked on the merger chiefly to save itself from being taken over. Investors seem to share their doubts: Phelps Dodge’s shares fell by 8% after it announced the deal, despite a simultaneous pledge to spend $ 5 billion on a share buy-back scheme once the merger is concluded.
  On the other hand, the price of nickel and copper jumped on the news. Traders seem to have assumed that the companies would have contemplated such an expensive deal only if they thought that metals would remain in short supply for some time. The more money that mining firms spend buying one another, rather than exploring for and developing new mines, the likelier that is.  [br] It can be inferred that some mining firms are keen to merge because
选项 A、they want to monopolize the mining market.
B、they have greatly profited from skyrocketing prices of metals.
C、they are afraid of losing money on the stock market.
D、they want to defeat all the other competitors of mining industry.
答案 B
解析 推断题。按照试题顺序及题干中出现的keen to merge定位至首段及第二段。开篇提到三家矿业公司正在谋划该产业有史以来最昂贵的一次合并。在对该合并进行简要说明之后，第二段首句指出：日用品价格的飞涨让矿业公司现金充足，同时也急欲把业务做大，显然这是一个承上启下的过渡句，根据常识可知，merge也是expand的一种方式，故可推断得出几家公司要合并是因为矿产价格飞涨，让它们有充裕的资金考虑扩张问题，故[B]为答案。这里没有提到矿业垄断问题，排除[A] 第二段第二句提到“做大业务的办法之一就是开采更多的金属，而不是在股市坐收渔利”，这里只是说明如何做大业务，并没有解释“他们不等着从股市赚钱”的原因，[C]属于无中生有，排除。[D]属于绝对项，排除。
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