How a Giant Copper Prize Brought Mining’s Two Underdogs Together

For years, it was the most obvious deal in the global mining industry, but one that no one could quite pull off. Then in mid-2024, executives at Teck Resources Ltd. and Anglo American Plc started talking about a tie-up of their two huge — and neighboring — copper mines high up in the Atacama desert.

About a year after they began, those conversations reached their culmination on Tuesday: the two miners announced a deal to combine not just their Chilean copper mines, but their entire companies. It’s one of the largest ever deals in the sector and will create a new copper mining colossus worth more than $50 billion.