June 2011

The metal news marketplace made its own headlines yesterday when Platts announced it was acquiring Steel Business Briefing, including its TSI unit. As an outsider to some extent, we can’t comment on the specifics including acquisition size, terms, etc., but from our perspective, the deal has significance for metal buying organizations as well as for [...]

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We recently wrote about the Paris Air show and the growing threat to Airbus and Boeing’s duopoly from challengers in the 100 seat plus sector. These challengers hail notably from China, Brazil, Canada and Russia. The Russians once had a sizable and relatively sophisticated aircraft industry. In the days of the cold war they churned [...]

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When he introduced Boeing’s 2011 Current Market Outlook (CMO) via video in mid-June, Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing for Boeing’s commercial airplanes, got a bit sentimental. “The 2011 Current Market Outlook is a story. A story about growth, a story about a market that has great opportunities, Tinseth said as he finished roaming Boeing [...]

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European Cities Turn Their Back on Cars

by Stuart Burns on June 29, 2011

Style:    Category: Green, Macroeconomics

Keywords:

A quiet revolution appears all across Europe, and I am not referring to protesters on the streets of Athens. Europeans, either via coercion or encouragement, have started to leave their cars at home and travel by foot, bicycle or public transport. On the whole this does not appear as an unpleasant experience. After all, cities [...]

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TC Malhotra contributes to MetalMiner from New Delhi. The rising trend of Naxalites attacks on mining and related activities across Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa, which is known as India’s mineral heartland, poses a serious threat to the growth of India’s mining industry. During the last few years, Naxals and other Maoists have targeted critical infrastructure, [...]

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Coming off the Harbor Aluminum conference last week, we wondered why the controversy surrounding the LME warehousing system and specifically the delays companies have experienced obtaining their metal from the LME’s Detroit Metro warehouse, (owned by Goldman Sachs) received little discussion, despite some quite negative press that we reported on previously here and here. Although [...]

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Now that the dust has settled from last week’s Harbor Aluminum Conference in Chicago, I find it hard to conclude anything other than a bright rosy future for aluminum (particularly if you are a producer or supplier). Rest assured, I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid, but when one looks at the factors driving aluminum prices and [...]

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China, Debt and Growth

by Stuart Burns on June 28, 2011

Style:    Category: Macroeconomics

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What goes around comes around they say, along with other equally useless phrases like “all good things come to an end.” China has had a good financial crisis of that we don’t doubt. Growth remains robust and has not only carried the country through double digit growth while the west has gone backwards but it [...]

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