But unlike Phelps Dodge, Noranda should also profit from its sizable nickel mining business.
Like Phelps Dodge, Noranda has been busy streamlining its operations, and should reap the benefits.
Some analysts mutter that Phelps Dodge embarked on the merger chiefly to save itself from being taken over.
Anderson spent a decade among smokestacks at Phelps Dodge Industries before joining Alex.
Phelps Dodge can now make a profit if copper stays near this price.
As with the Freeport acquisition of Phelps Dodge, the Newfield deal was done with a lot of borrowed capital.
Earlier this year, the shareholders of Inco and Falconbridge rejected a three-way tie-up with Phelps Dodge, an American copper miner.
ECONOMIST: How to make sense of the current plethora of mining deals
New Caledonia produces 30 percent of the world's nickel, with major producers SLN, Inco, Phelps Dodge and Falconridge all operating there.
Phelps Dodge sold too much of its '06 production forward and is realizing prices a dollar below the present market level.
Morgan Stanley analyst Wayne Atwell upgraded shares of copper producer Phelps Dodge, citing an expected bull run for copper prices over the next two years.
When Moffett merged Freeport Copper and Gold with Phelps Dodge a couple of years ago, FCX took on massive debt which it largely paid off in the first year.
It was Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold's discovery and development of Grasberg that propelled that company to be able to take over Phelps Dodge a little more than a year ago.
For copper, one of the biggest producers is Phelps Dodge (nyse: PD - news - people ), which is expected to earn just 20 cents per share in fiscal 2003, after two consecutive annual losses.
He owns personally and Atalanta Sosnoff Capital owns for clients the following stocks cited in this commentary: Google, Phelps Dodge, Amerada Hess, Rio Tinto, Transocean, GlobalSantaFe, CONSOL Energy, Peabody Energy, Hovnanian Enterprises, Apple Computer, Corning Glass and Microsoft.
Based in Pheonix, Phelps Dodge has copper mining operations in the U.S., Chile, Peru and Congo, while New Orleans-based Freeport operates the vast open-pit Grasberg gold, copper, and silver mine in Indonesia, and has reserves of about 37 billion pounds of copper and 40 million ounces of gold.
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