plv and weg - conditional strategy perhaps?, page-4

Tell me again why cliffs gave it away for nothing just to get their bond back ?
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Tony has answered that question already. It is like asking 'why did BHP leave cockatoo / why did BHP leave Koolan.

BHP left a lot of ore behind when they left the islands.
Portman mined millions of tonnes at Cockatoo after BHP 'left it'
Cliffs followed Portmans with more millions of tonnes at cockatoo.

So why did BHP leave Cockatoo. The island was not a dud. Portmans and Cliffs have done well since BHP left.
BHP had much grander large scale plans commensurate with their growth ...but Cockatoo had plenty of life left ...
Leaving a mine does not mean it is a dud.
Portmans and Cliffs applied themselves to, and were satisfied with, a tonnage of around 1.5MT per annum when
BHP left Cockatoo. BHP outgrew Cockatoo.

BHP left Koolan.
Did MGX buy a dud? NO!, they bought something that suited their size and scale. They are still mining millions of tonnes at Koolan and making GOOD money.
BHP leaving Koolan/Cockatoo does not mean the islands are spent.

Cliffs left Cockatoo.
According to PLV's reports on Cockatoo there is plenty of ore left. SO Cliffs leaving Cockatoo is irrelevent.

I think Cliffs left Cockatoo for the same reason BHP left Cockatoo. They out grew it. As companies, BHP/Cliffs had developed to a point where they could chase the bigger stuff such as the following.
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http://business.financialpost.com/2013/01/24/cliffs-overpriced-acquisition-of-consolidated-thompson-comes-back-to-haunt/

Cliffs agreed to pay a whopping $4.9-billion in cash in early 2011 to acquire Consolidated Thompson and its Bloom Lake iron ore mine in Quebec.
Bloom Lake was a brand new mine when Cliffs bought it, and was ramping up to its expected production capacity of eight million tonnes a year. But that was just the start, as Cliffs planned to implement a “Phase II” expansion to double capacity to 16 million tonnes by 2013.

There you go Cockatoo at 1.5MT per annum to Bloom lake at 16MT per annum. 10 times the size.

Maybe that's where Pluton will be in 10 years time.

But Cliffs had trouble and needed money, it seems.
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But for Cliffs, very little has gone right at Bloom Lake since then.
The production ramp-up was troubled from the start. To date, the mine has not even reached its initial planned capacity of eight million tonnes, much less 16 million. Cash costs are currently running at US$88 a tonne, far higher than the US$60 to US$65 per tonne that Cliffs expected.
On Thursday, the bad news came from Cliffs Natural Resources Inc., which plans to write off US$1-billion of goodwill from its takeover of Consolidated Thompson Iron Mines Ltd.

Cliffs said that the US$1-billion writedown is driven by Bloom Lake’s “anticipated lower long-term volumes and higher capital and operating costs.” The delay in the Phase II expansion also contributed to the impairment, though on the positive side, Cliffs expects to finally complete it next year.

Including Bloom Lake, Cliffs announced total asset writedowns on Thursday of about US$1.9-billion. The company took a number of other one-time charges, including US$100-million to US$150-million on its other iron ore operations in Eastern Canada.

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So Cliffs has moved itself into the BIG TIME.
The smaller stuff that it started with , like Cockatoo, might be seen as a distraction TO THEM.