Mike Henry had to have another crack at Anglo American, but would have realised that a second tilt at the company was a long shot after its board stonewalled BHP’s three efforts to engage with it last year.

It was an even longer shot this time, with Anglo on the verge of an agreed $US60 billion ($92 billion) nil-premium merger with Canada’s Teck Resources that offers substantial synergies by bringing together the two companies’ significant copper resources.

The last throw of the dice by Ross McEwan and Mike Henry failed.Credit: Bloomberg

In fact, it was that imminent merger – shareholders in the companies will vote on December 9 – which created a deadline for Henry and his relatively new chairman, Ross McEwan, to act if they wanted to at least try, again, to get their hands on Anglo’s attractive South American copper interests.

Responding to press reports of its approach to Anglo, BHP said on Monday that it had held preliminary discussions with Anglo’s board, but was no longer considering a combination of the two companies.

The approach, first reported by Bloomberg, involved BHP, valued by the market at about $205 billion, offering a mix of cash and shares for Anglo, which has a market capitalisation of about $65 billion.

The offer wouldn’t have been as complex as the $74 billion offer BHP made in April last year, which involved demergers of Anglo’s South African platinum and iron ore businesses. The platinum business has since been rebranded as Valterra and spun out by Anglo and trades in London with a market value of about $16.5 billion.

Anglo plans to restart the sale of its metallurgical coal interests early next year. The sale process was stalled by a fire in its Moranbah North mine in Queensland that derailed a $US3.8 billion ($5.9 billion) sale of........

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