ChinaMinmetals will no longer take over Yunnan Tin Group (YTG), which owns the world’s largest tin producer Yunnan Tin Co. (YTC), according to a report to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Monday.
YTG announced greater cooperation between its major shareholder, the Yunnan branch of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), and the state-owned China Minmetals in June. The understanding was that this move could have ended with a change in the ownership of YTG, and was expected to be completed by October last year. However, the two companies failed “to reach agreement on specific cooperation matters”, and talks were terminated.
According to Reuters, Yunnan-based Sino-Platinum Metals was also informed by Yunnan SASAC that cooperation talks with China Minmetals had fallen through. The company had similarly flagged a potential change in its major shareholder in June.
These potential mergers would not have been the first time a central-government run metals company had taken over a major Yunnan producer; Reuters also highlighted the merger of Aluminium Corp of China (Chinalco) and Yunnan Metallurgical Group, and its subsidiary Yunnan Aluminium. It has been suggested that part of the country’s overall metals strategy is to merge large domestic companies to enable them to compete on the global market. The country has also labelled tin as a critical material.
