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Coal Company
Shopping Spree
Link
Excerpt:
Last week, I noted that rating agency Standard
and Poors had upgraded Massey Energy from "hold" to a "buy."
Massey's the company that owns the mine where
29 miners were killed in an explosion recently.
Now we find out that Standard and Poors were right: Massey's prospects are only going up -- in fact, they're on a shopping spree!
Perhaps they're just taking George W. Bush's advice
from 2001 to heart: the best way to deal with a tragedy is to go shopping.
Anyway, the Wall Street Journal reports that
Massey completed a purchase of U.S. coal producer Cumberland Resources
Corp.
for $640 million in cash and 6.5 million of its
shares.
While Massey might be a particularly egregious
union-buster and regular safety violator, they're hardly that far outside
the norm
for their industry. They're serving their investors
and the politicians who benefit from their largesse, and they're taking
advantage
of opportunity -- the purchase of Cumberland
was said to be part of a focus on underground mining for Massey in the
face of
expected federal regulations on surface mining.