Good morning from Metal Bulletin's office in Shanghai as we bring you the latest news and pricing stories on Friday March 16.The base metals traded on the Shanghai Futures Exchange were broadly lower during Asian morning trading on Friday. Zinc and sister metal lead bucked the general weakness, however, albeit with marginal gains.Check Metal Bulletin's live futures report here.LME snapshot at 02.0...Read More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the most influential U.S. business lobbying group warned the Trump administration that unilateral tariffs on Chinese goods could lead to a destructive trade war that will hurt American consumers and U.S. economic growth.U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said in a statement on Thursday that such tariffs, associated with a probe of China’s int...Read More

(Reuters) - Former Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) Chairman Paul Jacobs has informed its board of directors that he will seek to partner with investment firms to make an offer for the U.S. semiconductor company, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.Jacobs’ attempt to put together an offer comes just a few days after Qualcomm fended off a $117 billion hostile bid from Singapore-based rival...Read More

(Reuters) - Ten years after JPMorgan (JPM.N) bought failing investment bank Bear Stearns, one of the first big harbingers of the financial crisis, investor views on U.S. banks are significantly brighter, although the sector may have already put its biggest gains behind it.JPMorgan initially announced its bid of $2 per share for Bear Stearns on March 16, 2008 when the Wall Street bank was on the br...Read More

MILAN (Reuters) - World stocks wavered and the dollar eased on Friday as turmoil in the U.S. administration kept markets watchful at the end of a week scarred by concerns that U.S. tariffs could provoke a trade war.The MSCI All-Country World index .MIWD00000PUS, which tracks 47 countries, was flat after three straight sessions of losses and was set for a weekly fall of around 0.6 percent.European...Read More

And so it begins. The United States will impose import tariffs on steel and aluminium, and with depressing inevitability other nations and trading blocs will cry "foul" and reach for the drawer marked "retaliation", almost certainly leading to a wider and broader trade war.It is not difficult to imagine how this will pan out for the wider global economy, geopolitics, overall trade flows and even t...Read More

The benchmark cash/three-month spread in aluminium at the start of this week hit backwardation levels not seen since before the Global Financial Crisis, which is a landmark event but not necessarily a signal of a major shift in market dynamics.It is most probably a short-term aberration caused by the potent combination of February date shorts clashing with dominant longs but given added spice and...Read More

Apple has been experimenting with ways to recover cobalt from its lithium-ion batteries and to use recycled cobalt. The company says it could potentially recover 550 kilograms of cobalt from every 100,000 iPhone 6 devices it recycles. Now there are reports it's looking to secure cobalt directly from miners, marking a further move by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to ensure certainty of ra...Read More

Apollo Minerals' (ASX:AON) Hugo Schumann runs Proactive through the exploration and development plans for their flagship Couflens tungsten-copper-gold Project in the South of France.''There's two opportunities here - the first is to reopen the world's highest grade tungsten mine ... and the second opportunity is gold''.''We think there's a very exciting gold opportunity along big fault systems in...Read More

Jeff Stusek, chief executive of Information Services Corp (TSE:ISV), tells Proactive 2017 was a year of strong growth for the company - with increased revenue, EBITDA (underlying earnings) and net income.He says they made a number of significant acquisitions consistent with their strategy of acquiring companies with competencies or operations in its industry.In the year to end December, the firm p...Read More

Copper concentrate treatment charges and refining charges (TCs/RCs) have shown little variation over the past two weeks despite an explosion in the numbers of direct trades while the market settled on second-quarter pricing.Smelters in China and elsewhere returned to the spot market for large tonnages, lowering their bids from more than $80 per tonne/$0.08 per lb to settle deals in the mid-$70/$0....Read More

Anglo Asian Mining Plc's (LON:AAZ) Bill Morgan and Steve Westhead discuss with Proactive their three-year rolling programme of geological exploration of near mine, brownfield and greenfield areas on its ground in Azerbaijan.The objectives of the programme are to replace mined ounces, extend the current mine life at the Gedabek project to a 10-year minimum, increase the company's inventory of resou...Read More

New long steel capacity in the pipeline in the Philippines may well disrupt trade flows in Asia once they come on stream, market sources told Metal Bulletin this week.This is because the Philippines could reduce its reliance on imports, which would result in seaborne cargoes being diverted elsewhere in the region. Major Philippine rebar producer SteelAsia Manufacturing Corp plans to increase its c...Read More

Zinc was the only base metal on the London Metal Exchange to close in positive territory on Friday March 16, while the majority of the market lacked significant drivers to push higher.The three-month zinc price closed $25 per tonne higher on support from a 15,425 tonne cancellation in New Orleans today. Aluminium's three-month price was unchanged at $2,085 per tonne while the market continues to s...Read More

Iron ore prices tumbled on Friday March 16 following a decline in the futures market amid doubts whether downstream demand for steel in China has truly started to recover after the Chinese New Year.Metal Bulletin's 62% Fe Iron Ore Index Today: $69.84 per tonne cfr QingdaoDaily change: down $2.27 per tonneMonth-to-date average: $73.61 per tonneMetal Bulletin's 58% Fe Premium Index Today: $56.91 per...Read More

The seaborne coking coal market took a breather on Friday March 16, though buyers outside of China are still anticipating prices to experience a downward correction.A cargo of mid-vol premium hard coking coal was traded at $215 per tonne fob Australia while a lower-ranked second-tier product changed hands at $182 per tonne fob Australia, sources told Metal Bulletin during the day. "The market is s...Read More

MOSCOW — There was a gold rush in Siberia Thursday when the hatch of a cargo plane accidentally flew open upon takeoff — scattering tons of gold bars on the runway, Russian news reports say.An AN-12 plane operated by the airline Nimbus took off for Krasnoyarsk carrying 9.3 tons of gold and other precious metals, said to be worth $368 million, according to a statement from the state Inv...Read More

Although base metals are under pressure in the short term, we have a bullish bias to our 2018 price forecasts given the supportive background of solid global economic growth and the fact that all six base metal markets look set to be in fundamental deficit this year. But each has a slightly different supply-side story and this aspect should be the main differentiator. For example, zinc's narrative...Read More

Maria Ezpeleta was planning to fly to Toronto earlier this month to speak about the impact of mining projects on women when she heard the news: The panel session, on "tackling gender bias" in the mining sector, was called off.In an ironic twist, the discussion of gender bias had been ensnared by #MeToo - the growing movement to stop sexual harassment - because new accusations were surfacing again...Read More

Despite Chinese winter smelter production cuts generally falling short of expectations and domestic stocks continuing to climb - both of which suggest the market remains far more comfortably supplied at this point than aluminium bulls had been anticipating - prices still rallied into the year-end to reach $2,290/tonne for the first time since March 2012.And after a New Year pull-back the strength...Read More