• India’s largest copper and zinc producer, Sterlite Industries Ltd. (ADR:SLT), agreed to buy assets of recently bankrupted miner Asarco LLC for $2.6 billion, Bloomberg reported. Asarco has three copper mines, a smelter and refinery Asarco is the third-largest copper maker in the U.S., producing 235,000 tons in 2007, and Sterlite said it plans to make it the largest.

• Petroleo Brasileiro SA (ADR:PBR), better known as Petrobras, doled out six-year deepwater oil rigging contracts to Scorpion Offshore Ltd. and Sevan Marine ASA. The rigs are for Petrobras’ November discover of the Tupi field, which hold between 5 million and 8 million barrels of oil, but underneath as much as 3,000 meters of water, Bloomberg reported.

• Russia’s inflation rate could reach 14% by the end of the year, the head of the International Monetary Fund said yesterday (Monday). “Inflationary pressures are likely to remain high,” Poul Thomsen said in a statement. “Absent policy changes aimed at slowing growth in demand, we expect inflation to be running at about 14% by end-2008.”

• South Korea has raised its first-quarter growth estimate from 0.7% to 0.8% from the previous quarter, The Associated Press reported. The economy grew 5.8% in the January-March quarter year-over-year, beating the April estimate of 5.7%, the Bank of Korea said on its web site. South Korea, Asia’s fourth largest economy, expanded by 5% in 2007.

• Toyota Motor Corp. (ADR: TM) may downgrade its U.S. sales forecast to account for a bleak outlook for pick-up trucks and other big vehicles, the Financial Times reported yesterday (Monday). Katsuaki Watanabe, Toyota’s president, told the FT that while the company hoped to make up for the lost truck and sport utility vehicle sales by selling more smaller cars including its Prius hybrid, he was “not sure” this would be enough to offset the drop in large vehicle sales. The company, which is America’s second top-selling carmaker and the global sales leader in the first quarter, originally planned to sell just over 2.64 million vehicles in the U.S. market this year.

• Standard & Poor’s did the financial services sector no favors yesterday (Monday) when it cut the credit ratings on a number of major U.S. securities firms including Lehman Brothers Inc. (LEH), Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. (MER), and Morgan Stanley (MS). “The outlooks on the large financial institutions sector in the U.S. are now predominantly negative,” the credit rating agency said in a statement. Financial institutions have already written down over $350 billion in subprime mortgage related losses globally and S&P said they face more write-offs, Reuters reported.

• The Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing Survey increased 1.0 to 49.6 in May, its highest level since January. The bulk of the increase was due to strong exports fueled by a weak dollar. “Manufacturing may not be growing, but it is not falling apart either,” Joel Naroff, president and chief economist of Naroff Economic Advisors Inc. said yesterday (Monday) in a note to clients.

• Business software firm NetSuite Inc. (N) announced yesterday (Monday) that it intends to purchase privately held OpenAir Inc. for $26 million in cash, Forbes reported. The acquisition could cause a 1-cent to 2-cent quarterly loss in the short-term, but should help NetSuite to speed development of products aimed at professional service companies.

Source: Global Investment Roundups Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Nickel had a directionless day, eventually easing to $12.82/lb., down 5 2/3 cents. Zinc traded with a down bias, falling below $1 at one point before climbing back to close at $1.0089/lb., down two-thirds of a cent. Aluminum declined slowly but steadily to end at $1.3002/lb., down more than a penny and three-quarters, while lead continued weak, shedding 5¾ cents, to $1.0916/lb.

Base metal buyers backed off as easing supply fears and a strongly firming dollar combined to limit their appeal.

The end of the 3-week strike at three of Codelco’s copper mines in Chile, which had helped underpin the market, finally made its effects felt yesterday, a day after workers settled with the company. The biggest mine, El Teniente (25% of output), reopened Tuesday afternoon, Andina mine is back at 80% of capacity, and El Salvador could restart by the end of the week.

However, some analysts believe the resolution may not hold. Alex Heath of RBC Capital Markets warned that: “An agreement to a bonus award does not address the underlying issue of hiring contract workers onto the permanent workforce that was at the root of the industrial action … Given that this has still not been addressed, it may prove to be only a temporary solution.”

And supplies do still remain constricted, as copper inventories monitored by the LME reported a drop of 625 metric tons yesterday, to 109,025 tons.

The deciding factor determining copper’s direction will likely be China, and although Shanghai inventories fell for a third straight week, the demand picture is fuzzy. Chinese copper imports fell by 19% in Q1, and observers are expecting further declines in April’s data, due out next week.

“Demand seems to be softening somewhat on a global basis, and Chinese use has come down,” said John Gross, publisher of the Copper Journal. “There’s some concern demand will continue to slow.”

Finally, those of a certain age will remember collecting 1943 pennies as kids, that year being the only one in which the penny was made of steel rather than copper. Now, with the cost of fabricating a penny at 1.25 cents, Congress is debating bring back, yes, the steel penny. Of course, it’d be simpler to get rid of the coin entirely, since it no longer has any real utility. But when has the government ever opted for the simple solution?