PotashCorp: BHP sweats as China waits in wings

Canada’s PotashCorp up for grabs; China’s Sinochem might intervene

Where there’s muck, there’s brass. That old saying – denoting the link between fertile earth and filthy lucre – has never been truer. When BHP Billiton bid $39 billion for Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan (PotashCorp) in August, the world’s largest miner wasn’t just trying to get its hands on Canada’s (and the world’s) largest source of fertilizer.

BHP was simultaneously making two bets. First, that its investors would immediately recognize the benefit of buying an awful lot of potash in an overpopulated and increasingly hungry world.

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