BHP Billiton Announces Dramatic Asset Spinoff

BHP Billiton is demerging - creating a new, smaller yet-to-be-named offspring, focusing on the aluminium, manganese, nickel and silver parts of the business, with the main, larger business (96% of earnings in 2014) focusing on iron ore, copper, petroleum and potash.

Coal will be common to both, and BHP is active in both metallurgical and thermal variants. The President of the coal business, Dean Dalle Valle, has been with BHP for a truly impressive 36 years and ran the Uranium business for three years and started his career as a mine apprentice. He has been profiled in The Australian.

BHP Billiton, which was formed in 2001 from the merger of BHP and Billiton, is a global mining giant, known for acquisitions and its failure in 2005 to take over rival Rio Tinto. One of CEO Andrew Mackenzie's priorities since taking the helm has been to simplify BHP's portfolio. Andrew has a PhD in Organic Chemistry. He worked in BP Research, moved to the Finance division, and became Head of Capital Markets, and the rest, as they say, is history. He has also worked at Rio Tinto as head of the industrial minerals division.

Tim Cutt who heads the Petroleum (and Potash) Business has a degree in Petroleum Engineering from Louisiana Tech. BHP is a big player in deep water exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. The iron ore business is principally in Pilbara, Western Australia, and is led by Jimmy Wilson.

How Glencore Counters Commodities Cycles: A Review of 2013

Glencore, as its annual report boasts, is a well-diversified commodities company, active in over ninety commodities. It acquired Xstrata in 2013 and realised synergies of around $2.4 billion. Its 2013 revenue came in at 239 billion dollars.

Its KPIs include: EBIT/EBITDA, Funds from Operations (FFO) and Net debt/FFO to Net debt (large expensive projects tend to increase this ratio).

Glencore computes Value at Risk and has set a 1 day 95% VaR limit of $100m.

Glencore shares trade in London (GLEN), Hong Kong and Joburg. Its financial accounts are in USD.

Standard Chartered to Pay $300m AML Fine to NY State Department of Financial Services

Fine Adds to Previous Fines

On top of the fine, the UK bank is banned from accepting new dollar clearing accounts without approval of the State Department (DFS). This fine adds to the $340m that SC agreed to pay in August 2012 after admitting to having violated US sanctions on Iran.

Background to the New York DFS

The New York DFS was created in October 2011 as part of the State budget unveiled by Governor Andrew Cuomo (who assumed office in January 2011), and is a graduate of Albany Law School. DFS is an amalgam of the former New York State Department of Banking and separately Department of Insurance.

Benjamin Lawsky became New York State's first Superintendent of Financial Services in 2011.

Melvin Capital forms from the Ruins of SAC

Being formed by Gabriel Plotkin.