It happened in stages and is a bit complex but the big buy was a suite of Anglo's coal assets (three in Qld, Taroom, Collingwood and Ownaview and two in NSW, Hume (then called Sutton Forest) and Bylong).
Ownaview and Bylong didn't end up with COK but the others did. Of those, Hume was already sold for $10M and the other two were sold together with the remaining 51% stake of Woori (which COK has had for many years) in this deal.
They already sold a 49% stake in Woori to Mitsui for $37M a few years ago. So they've basically sold the other 51% for a big discount and thrown in the two massive deposits of Taroom and Collingwood for free. After spending many millions of dollars on them in exploration costs.
They were good assets but they were stranded by the collapse of the Surat Basin Rail project when Xstrata abandoned its Wandoan mine. Now COK has no other good assets and just a big pile of crap assets forced on them by Noble through BWD.
Not that any of this seems to have done COK management any real harm - I read the other day that Lochtenberg's family home in Mosman is on the market for what will be a record price for 2014 in Australia - $18.5M. Good work if you can get it, I guess...
COK Price at posting:
1.4¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held