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It was a bigger deal that for the first half of 2009 squatted in the headlines of the business papers and at the top of the M&A league tables, refusing to budge and squashing the competition. Chinalco’s $19.5 billion investment in Anglo-Australian mining group Rio Tinto would have been the largest ever investment in a foreign company by a Chinese firm – the deal to stand as the flagbearer for China’s drive to acquire overseas resources. Only it didn’t happen. Besieged by political objections from Australian politicians fearing the sale of precious assets to China, and by business objections from Rio shareholders unhappy at terms struck near the bottom of the market, the deal was cancelled in June.