TPT March 2007

From the AmericaS

› Phelps Dodge (Phoenix, Arizona), the world’s second-largest copper producer, will be acquired by Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold , a smaller rival, in a cash and stock deal worth $25.9 billion. The chairman and chief executive of Phelps Dodge, J Steven Whisler, said the two companies had discussed a possible merger for about a decade. The premium of about 33 per cent offered by Freeport-McMoRan, Mr Whisler said, was a major factor in Phelps Dodge’s decision to end its 172-year history as an independent company. Freeport-McMoRan, based in New Orleans, Louisiana, is the world’s lowest-cost copper producer. Best known for its Grasberg mine in West Papua, the company is the largest taxpayer to the Indonesian government. The transaction with Phelps Dodge is the latest in a series of mining and metals consolidations involving US companies. If approved by shareholders, it would create the world’s largest copper producer and the largest mining company based in North America.

returning from Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean. On 23 January, when the tougher US rules took effect, passport offices reported applications up 53 per cent in the United States and 33 per cent in Canada from the previous year. The tighter border controls being instituted five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks will be extended to the busy US land borders with Canada and Mexico by 1 June 2009. Meanwhile, the new rules on air travel are causing enough problems for the passport services. An official of the US State Department estimated that it will issue 16 million passports this year, up from 7 million four years ago. A spokesman for Passport Canada said that its offices were swamped. Canadian business executives are predictably unhappy about the confusion and delays to be expected with the new regulations. But the immediate big loser will be the $50 billion Canadian tourism industry, already suffering from a 28 per cent drop in visitors from the US over five years. Writing from Toronto in the Washington Post , Doug Struck noted that fewer Americans are coming to Canada largely because of the increase in value of the Canadian dollar, which has erased cross- border shopping bargains. A representative of the Canadian duty- free shops at the land borders told him that, even before the new passport requirement took effect, high gasoline prices, the epidemic in 2003 of the viral illness SARS, increased security, and confusion over the border-crossing rules had all hurt business. ( ‘Canadians fear fallout of US passport rules’ 13 January).

Spotlight on: Canada

New US passport rules: Canada’s business travellers and tourism to suffer All airline passengers landing in the US are now required to present a passport, not just the driver’s license and birth certificate that once sufficed for Canadians crossing the border and for US citizens

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M arch /A pril 2007