You have to love how things morph/progress/ and unfold when it comes to the game of big stakes mining when M&A is on the horizon.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/marketreport/5614985/Xstrata-bolsters-bid-team-with-Lazard.html
Xstrata bolsters bid team with Lazard
Xstrata and Anglo American were the main talking points as traders tried to work out what will happen next in the battle between the two mining giants over a possible merger.
By Ben Harrington
Published: 7:42PM BST 23 Jun 2009
"Yesterday, the talk was that Xstrata had bolstered its heavyweight advisory team by hiring Lazard alongside JP Morgan Cazenove and Deutsche Bank. Lazard is said to have a "discreet" role working with Xstrata, which is thought to not have given up on the idea of a combination of the two companies.
Meanwhile, rumours whipped round the market in morning trade that Chinese aluminium giant Chinalco was considering a counter-bid for Anglo.
By lunchtime, however, those rumours had evolved. The gossip was that Anglo had been talking to a Chinese group, either Chinalco or China Development Bank (CDB), about the possibility of one of them taking a significant stake in the company to help fend off Xstrata.
Some dealers, though, said the Chinese were in cahoots with Xstrata. That theory had the Chinese buying a large stake in Xstrata and then backing a takeover of Anglo. Sources said CDB certainly had sniffed around Xstrata and Glencore, which owns a 35pc stake in Xstrata, when it was approached by Brazilian mining giant Vale in 2007.
And dealers could not resist tipping Vale as a player likely to get involved in the situation – although it was unclear which company the Brazilian group would like to acquire. Anglo fell 46 to £16.52 but Xstrata rose 4.8 to 639.9p. "
