Billionaire bust-up spells trouble for decades old mining empire
The two octogenarian founders of global commodities giant AMCI have had a bitter falling out, and it has paralysed one of Australia’s most successful miners.
A bout of geological challenges at Queensland’s Ironbark coal mine won’t help a sale process that was already struggling to find a buyer, but the majority owner of the mine, AMCI, has bigger problems right now.
For close to 40 years, AMCI’s global mining and commodity trading empire was built on mutual trust and consensus decisions between its founding fathers, German-born American billionaires Hans Mende and Fritz Kundrun. But trust between the two octogenarians has been lost, and consensus between the pair is increasingly rare.
Peter KerResources reporterPeter Ker covers resource companies for The Australian Financial Review, based in Melbourne. Connect with Peter on Twitter. Email Peter at pker@afr.com
