The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[DewDiligence]

CLF sells equity stake in Sonoma project for A$141M (~$144M):

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cliffs-natural-resources-inc-announces-200500289.html

Since 2007, CLF had owned 45% of the Sonoma coal-mining JV in Queensland, Australia. CLF’s share of the annual Sonoma production was small—about 1.5M tonnes—and the JV was not especially lucrative insofar as 2/3 of the output was thermal coal and only 1/3 was metallurgical. All told, the Sonoma JV was an asset of sufficiently dubious merit that I’m happy to see CLF take the cash buyout.

CLF still has another dubious JV: the Amapá iron-ore project in Brazil, where CLF’s equity stake is 30%. Perhaps CLF will see fit to unload this asset too.