Rio Tinto's M&A madness www.mining.com

Some companies are good at takeovers. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett has used well over a hundred acquisitions over decades to help leverage $1,200 of savings from his newspaper round into one of the world's largest business empires.

Rio Tinto Group isn't one of those companies. Indeed, it's hard to find an acquisition since its 2000 takeover of Australian iron ore miner North Ltd. that's not been a top-of-the-market catastrophe.

That should make investors nervous about the prospect that a big new lithium deal could be forthcoming.

Rio Tinto is working with advisers on a bid for a stake in Soc. Quimica & Minera de Chile SA, people familiar with the matter told Jack Farchy, Dinesh Nair and Thomas Biesheuvel of Bloomberg News on Friday.

SQM, as it's known, has been on a tear, with shares more than doubling this year alongside a lithium carbonate price that's tripled since the start of 2013. A purchase of the 32 percent stake held by Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. would be worth about $4.8 billion at current prices.

If you think you've seen this movie before, it's because you have — and it's never ended well. Aluminum prices rallied more than 50 percent in the two years before Rio Tinto fended off Alcoa Inc. in a $38.1 billion bid for Canada's Alcan in 2007. Over the subsequent 24 months, the metal slipped close to its lowest levels in two decades, and Rio ended up being bailed out of its debt problems by Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd.

As if that experience wasn't enough, management were back three years later for another bite at a hot commodity. With the takeovers of Riversdale Mining Ltd. and Coal & Allied Industries Ltd. in 2010 and 2011, Rio Tinto sought to take advantage of then-booming demand for coking coal (up 62 percent during 2010) and thermal coal (up 50 percent). The former was disposed of three years later for about 2 percent of its $3.7 billion purchase price and is now the subject of a fraud claim by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Coal & Allied was sold earlier this year at an equity value of about a third what Rio Tinto and its partner Mitsubishi Corp. had originally paid.

Even a less prominent deal like the purchase of BHP Billiton Ltd.'s interest in Richards Bay Minerals hasn't panned out well. During 2011, prices for its main product, titanium dioxide, climbed 43 percent, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Since the $1.7 billion deal in 2012, they've mostly been in an extended slump. Last year, earnings from the division that includes Richards Bay, on South Africa's east coast, were less than a quarter of their level in the year of purchase.

All this should be a potent reason for Chief Executive Officer Jean-Sebastien Jacques to avoid taking a dip in SQM's Chilean salt lakes. As Gadfly has argued, the market for lithium isn't likely to be that tight over the medium term, despite current price exuberance. If Jacques wants to make a bullish bet, he's far better off spending money on Rio Tinto's own Jadar deposit in Serbia, which the company claims could be among the world's biggest.

Granted, Jacques may have learned from his predecessors' missteps. Getting into SQM's takeover data room would give Rio Tinto insight into the company's operations and a better understanding of the still-obscure lithium market in a way that would assist Jadar — a far better bet than an outright takeover, Bernstein analyst Paul Gait argued last week.

Shareholders had better hope that's right. For the $5 billion or so he would need to buy Potash Corp. out of SQM, Jacques could get a majority stake in Alcoa Inc., a company that Gadfly has contended would have far more attractive prospects. For all Rio Tinto's problems with aluminum takeovers, the current Alcoa is focused on more attractive upstream assets and generates more than twice SQM's Ebitda from an enterprise value that's only two-thirds as big.

Over the years, Rio Tinto's major acquisitions have proved an eerily prescient contrarian indicator for commodities. When they buy, it's a good idea to sell.

For the sake of his own reputation and that of his company, the best thing Jacques could do with this deal would be to walk away.

ADB Asian Development Bank : Extends Assistance to Sustain Education Quality, Access in Mongolia www.4-traders.com

ULAANBAATAR, MONGOLIA (21 November 2017)- The Asian Development Bank's (ADB) Board of Directors has approved a $50 million loan to help sustain access to and quality of pre-primary, primary, and secondary education in Mongolia, as continued economic difficulties pose challenges to the provision of quality education services in the country.

'Significant cuts in the education budget for 2017 and beyond constrain the government's capacity to mitigate further deterioration of education services,' said Asako Maruyama, Education Specialist at ADB's East Asia Department. 'This would result in lost opportunities for pre-primary, primary, and secondary education, especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, unless some mitigating measures are implemented.'

With declining foreign direct investment and falling commodity prices, Mongolia's economic growth has slowed, from 17.3% in 2011 to 1.0% in 2016. The slowdown has led to large revenue shortfalls and cuts in government investment, requiring the government to adopt the Economic Recovery Plan supported by the International Monetary Fund and reduce public spending further. The education budget has been cut to a minimum, only enough to keep schools and kindergartens operating.

Meanwhile, seats in schools and kindergartens have increasingly become unavailable due to the growth in the school and kindergarten-aged population, which has been outpacing the construction and expansion of schools and kindergartens. During 2009-2015, enrollments in pre-primary education doubled, while the number of kindergartens increased only 1.5 times. Likewise, enrollments in primary and secondary education rose by 7.8% during 2012-2015, but only 13 schools were built. The gap in enrollment capacity has been widening particularly in Ulaanbaatar because of disproportionate population growth caused by internal migration. Of the 33 schools operating in three shifts in the country, 30 are in Ulaanbaatar.

The quality of education also suffers. The curriculum reform, which started in school year 2013 from primary education, remains incomplete without new curriculum for senior secondary education and reliable student learning assessment system. Adequate teaching and learning materials accompanying the new curriculum have not been developed or distributed to schools on time. Moreover, teachers, school managers, and local education administrators have received little training on the new curriculum.

The project aims to minimize these negative effects during this difficult economic period by narrowing the gap in the enrollment capacity of schools and kindergartens, and supporting the curriculum and associated assessment system reforms, provision of teaching and learning materials, and training of teachers, school managers, and local education administrators. It will also strengthen systems for planning and managing education services. The project will directly benefit about 15,000 children enrolled in 35 newly constructed or expanded schools and kindergartens.

ADB, based in Manila, is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration. Established in 1966, ADB is celebrating 50 years of development partnership in the region. It is owned by 67 members-48 from the region. In 2016, ADB assistance totaled $31.7 billion, including $14 billion in cofinancing.

Mongolian kids hope Harumafuji stays in sumo world www3.nhk.org.jp

Children in Mongolia say they hope a scandal-hit sumo champion who hails from their country will continue to compete in the world of Japanese wrestling.

The British company opens OTR tire repair service in Mongolia www.mongolianbusinessdatabase.com

With more than forty years’ experience and repair systems installed across all seven continents, Monaflex is the industry leader in providing equipment for the repair and vulcanisation of damage in all tyres, ranging from the largest OTR earthmovers to the smallest truck tyre and it opened its official business with Mongolian partner Uran Tusul LLC last week.

Russia targets strategic Chinese energy market www.rt.com

Russian oil major Rosneft has inked a deal with Chinese partner CEFC Energy for crude oil deliveries starting next year. It is part of the companies’ long-term agreement announced earlier this year.

Amazon holiday hiring is reaching sky-high levels — this year's tally will be about 120,000 www.businessinsider.com

With Thanksgiving only a few days away, American consumers and retailers are gearing up for the annual post-Turkey Day holiday spending bonanza. In preparation for the madness, Amazon has said it plans to hire some 120,000 seasonal employees at sites in 33 US states.

MNT 100 thousand fine imposed on lack of documentations in foreign nationals www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The Immigration Agency notifies foreign nationals residing and traveling in Mongolia about the compulsion of carrying their passports and other documents at all times.

November 20, 2017 trading report www.mse.mn

On November 20, 2017, 672,766 shares of 35 firms listed as Tier I, II, and III were traded. 18 firms’ shares increased in price, 14 decreased and 3 remained unchanged. Gonir JSC /GNR/ was the top performer, increasing 15.00 percent, whereas Frontier Land Group JSC /MDR/ was the worst performer, decreasing 6.38 percent.

Tributes paid to Chinggis khaan and great white banners www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ November 19 or the auspicious first day of the first month of winter, according to the Lunar Calendar marked the 855th birth anniversary of Great Chinggis Khaan, the National Pride Day and. On this occasion, ceremony for raising the state flag took place at the central square, followed by ceremony for exalting the Great White Banners.

Xi’s China will only showcase illiberalism and dogma www.ft.com

The Chinese Communist party’s 19th Congress continues to shape the way we think about China, policymaking and the state of the country’s financial and capital markets.

An increasingly authoritarian China will try to make the economy and society work better, not become more liberal. It will try to engineer a harmless deleveraging, which is without precedent. Its large savings are likely to remain trapped, limiting the oft-cited internationalisation of the renminbi.

These issues matter, not least for investors because China’s $7tn equity market and its $10tn bond market are the world’s second-, and fourth-largest, respectively. Next year, Chinese A-shares will be included in the MSCI emerging markets benchmark.

Chinese bonds face bigger hurdles to inclusion in global benchmarks but some bonds are already part of lesser indices. Party cells in company management and high scores given to issuers by Chinese bond rating agencies are now on every investor’s “must find out” list.

The centralisation of power around Xi Jinping at the apex of a strengthened party — a substitute for the institutionalisation of rules, constraint and consensus — means there will be more dogma than debate in policymaking.

To oppose the president will be to oppose the party. Binary outcomes mean that, when something goes wrong, market risks will be higher and blame will lie firmly at Xi’s feet. Investors always worry about politics but concerns are greater in the absence of sound institutions.

Xi Jinping’s China will probably be the antithesis of reform and opening up. There is no sign that the government intends to address its deeply conflicted roles as owner, participant and regulator in the economy and finance. Investor interests will always be subordinate.

The recent announcement to lift the ceiling of foreign ownership of financial firms might be significant if it happened on a significant scale but the financial commanding heights will not be ceded to foreigners.

The most immediate issue, though, is financial policy. The government’s current financial crackdown and regulatory tightening is aimed at China’s debt, which is still expanding at about 14 per cent per annum and funded by increasingly short-term and volatile deposits. Financial conditions have been tightening with 10-year bond yields up by almost 2 percentage points over the past year to reach over 4 per cent, the highest for three years.

Markets expect the squeeze to continue, along with more bond defaults, and rising concerns about deteriorating debt service capacity and credit rollover risks. Zhou Xiaochuan, the outgoing head of the central bank, has warned of a “Minsky Moment” if leverage isn’t reduced.

Here is the rub, however. Slower credit expansion is leading to slower economic growth, as recent indicators confirm. Ostensibly, the party seems prepared for this as its focus shifts to inequality, social, rural development and industrial policy goals. Yet, if the government were willing to permit a proper and sustained deleveraging, it would have to accommodate much slower growth, higher unemployment, and degrees of financial and currency stress — none of which are yet present.

The central bank’s key policy rate has been raised but, at about 2.5 per cent, it is far from the 5-8 per cent seen in the tightening cycles in 2011 and 2013-14.

Monetary tightening has been modest, especially with producer price inflation running at about 7 per cent, and rising core consumer prices. All lenders and most borrowers, including the array of local government borrowing platforms, remain fully funded. The central bank continues to inject several hundred billion renminbi regularly to keep markets calm.

We need to pay attention to the December Economic Work Conference and the actions of the new Financial Stability and Development Committee. But past and current behaviour suggest that, faced with more growth volatility and downside risk, the government will again ease policy — so 2018 will be a crucial time to determine the guts of financial policy.

More generally, from behind a wall of controls on outward capital movements, China is showcasing to the world its state intervention and authoritarian model. From the other side, we can see strongly controlled capital markets, a currency against which foreigners can’t build major claims, and a limited appetite for voluntary deleveraging.

Xi Jinping’s China will have to resolve a fundamental contradiction between rising economic heft — and increasing political illiberalism — at a time of significant financial volatility.