Asarco's assets sold to Indian company

India's biggest nonferrous mining and metals company, Sterlite Industries, will buy almost all of Asarco's resources, including three open-pit copper mines and a copper smelter in Arizona, as well as a copper refinery, rod and cake plant and precious metals facility in Texas, for $2.6 billlion. [right: Mission Mine, south of Tucson; credit Asarco]

The deal is still subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Within hours, Grupo Mexico, which bought Asarco in 1999, said it will do everything within its powers to stop the sale.

Asarco produced 259,043 tons of refined copper in 2007, making it the third largest copper producer in the U.S. It had total revenues of nearly $1.9 billion for the year ending December 2007, according to a statement from Sterlite.