Now is not the time for Freeport-McMoRan to be thinking about mergers and acquisitions, the mining company's chief executive officer says.
According to Richard Adkerson, the company - which is just over half-way through a mega-project to transform its giant Grasberg copper-gold mine in Indonesia from an open-pit to an underground operation - is on the verge of creating huge shareholder value."I just don't believe, as a shareholder, that there's any way that we would want to consider a merger of equals right now, where we would dilute the opportunity that we have as a standalone company that's so attractive," he said during the company's third-quarter earnings call this week."We worked for it for a long time, and I believe we're on the verge of really good things happening at Freeport," he said."While we've made great progress, we're less than 60% there in terms of the volumes that we'll achieve at Grasberg. Even though copper markets are strong now, there are factors working today that could well make copper much more...