Battery metals sector closes the year with some large M&A deals

The critical metal sector saw two big deals during the second last week of the year, noted Michael McCrae, mining audiences manager at Kitco  

On Friday McCrae recorded Kitco Roundtable with John Feneck, Portfolio Manager and Founder of Feneck Consulting. 

This week the world's largest miner, BHP, firmed up terms to acquire OZ Minerals. Deal has been upsized to $6.39 billion. For comparison, the Agnico-Pan American-Yamana deal was $4.8 billion. OZ Minerals has copper and nickel operations in Australia. Forbes reports that the acquisition could be BHP's biggest in over a decade. The deal follows the trend of big miners investing in the battery metal space: Sibanye-Stillwater buying ioneer and Keliber, Rio Tinto spending $2.4 billion on Serbian lithium project Jadar. Last year BHP Billiton lost the fight to acquire Noront Resources and its rich nickel project in Ontario.  

Keeping with the battery metal theme, Lithium Americas is set to acquire Arena Minerals for $227 million. CEO Jonathon Evans said the transaction will consolidate development projects in Argentina. Lithium Americas plans to cut itself in two in 2023 with one company focusing on Latin America and the other on North America with the goal of unlocking value. 

Roundtable also covered macro picture with Feneck predicting a hard landing due to the Federal Reserve's aggressive moves to fight inflation.