Court approves Asarco environmental settlement

The Asarco bankruptcy court yesterday "approved a $1.1 billion environmental settlement between the mining firm and federal and state agencies," according to a story in the Arizona Republic. This will resolve $6.8 billion in claims and sets the stage for resolution of the competing bids to take over the company.

The paper reports that "Asarco will pay $30 million to clean up three sites in Arizona: the Sacaton open-pit copper-mine site near Casa Grande [right, credit GoogleEarth] in Pinal County and the Salero and Trench mine sites near Patagonia in Santa Cruz County."

Grupo Mexico ups its offer for Asarco

Grupo Mexico amended its offer to take Asarco out of bankruptcy, to $2.9 billion, including $1.3 billion in cash and $1.3 billion put into escrow last week, the Wall Street Journal and others are reporting.

Competing offers on the table are from Sterlite Industries Ltd., a subsidiary of Vedanta Resources PLC, which offered $1.1 billion in cash and a $600 million note, and a recent proposalfrom hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, which has been valued at $500 million in cash but would reportedly let Asarco keep a multi-billion dollar judgement against Grupo made earlier. [right, Asarco's Mission Mine. Credit, Asarco]