Analysis-BHP's options for Anglo American deal narrow as deadline looms
) include sweetening its $42.7 billion buyout offer, making a hostile bid or walking away for now as it approaches a May 22 deadline to lodge a binding offer.
Anglo's board has already knocked back two all-share proposals from BHP as inadequate and too difficult to execute and on Tuesday unveiled plans for a break-up to focus on energy transition metalThat plan met with a mildly supportive response from Anglo investors, who said it provided a strategy but was short on details.
A top 25 Anglo investor said that there was nothing compelling about the company's restructuring proposal, which resulted in shares closing 3.2% lower at 26.195 pounds on Tuesday, below BHP's latest offer of about 27.53 pounds per share.Swiss commodities group Glencore is studying a possible rival bid for Anglo, Reuters reported this month.
The option of going hostile and taking its offer directly to Anglo shareholders is not new to BHP, which did so unsuccessfully in 2007 with a $140 billion all-share bid for rival Rio Tinto. It also made a $39 billion hostile bid for Canada's Potash Corp in 2010 that was blocked by the Canadian government.
It could also decide to walk away, just as Xstrata, later bought by Glencore, did from a proposed $96 billion merger of equals that was rejected by Anglo's board in 2009.
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