The proposed $60 billion combination between Anglo American and Canada’s Teck Resources has emerged as one of the most pivotal and politically charged transactions in the contemporary global mining industry. Marketed as a “merger of equals,” the deal is being positioned to investors as a strategic alignment with the decarbonisation era and global demand for critical minerals such as copper and zinc. Yet behind the corporate messaging lies a more complex reality — one that speaks to shifting centres of mineral power, structural inequality in capital markets, and the slow unravelling of South Africa’s mineral sovereignty.
Economist and mining analyst Duma Gqubule, in his 2025 report Bring Back Our Minerals and Stop the Merger Between Anglo American and Teck Resources, delivers one of the most comprehensive critiques of the transaction to date. He argues that while the merger promises efficiency gains and operational synergies, it effectively finalises Anglo American’s disengagement from South Africa, the country that served as its birthplace and historic growth engine. “This merger,” Gqubule writes, “marks the quiet conclusion of a century-long relationship between Anglo and the South African economy.”
Founded in 1917 by Ernest Oppenheimer, Anglo American once epitomised the scale and ambition of South African industrialisation. At its height, it controlled firms representing nearly 43% of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s market capitalisation and employed close to 90,000 South Africans across its mining and industrial divisions. By the time of its 1999 primary listing migration to the London Stock Exchange, Anglo was already repositioning itself as a transnational commodities group rather than a South African institution. What was then described as “globalisation” now looks, in retrospect, like a gradual corporate delinking from South Africa’s real economy.
Under the current leadership of CEO Duncan Wanblad, Anglo has adopted a portfolio optimisation strategy anchored in high-margin, “future-facing” commodities, particularly copper. This strategy has involved divestment from legacy assets, including coal, platinum, and diamond operations. In 2025, the group exited its stake in Valterra Platinum, once the world’s largest platinum producer, and began assessing options for its remaining diamond and manganese businesses. Post-merger, Anglo Teck is expected to retain only Kumba Iron Ore as its South African asset. Market analysts, including JP Morgan Cazenove, have already indicated that Kumba could be sold or demerged to create a copper-focused pure-play structure.
Financial data from the 2024 fiscal year reveal the clear imbalance between the two merging entities. Anglo American generated $28.9 billion in revenue and $8.5 billion in EBITDA, compared with Teck’s $9.1 billion in revenue and $2.9 billion in EBITDA. Anglo’s market capitalisation stood at approximately $42 billion — more than double Teck’s $20 billion valuation. Despite this disparity, the merged entity will be headquartered in Vancouver, chaired by Teck’s Sheilla Murray, and led by a majority-Canadian executive team. Anglo Teck will also invest CAD $4.5 billion (roughly R55 billion) in Canada over five years to meet regulatory expectations under the Investment Canada Act.
According to Reuters (15 September 2025), Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Industry Minister Mélanie Joly conditioned approval of the transaction on relocating Anglo’s head office to Canada. The Wall Street Journal (25 November 2025) subsequently reported that Joly deemed Anglo’s initial commitments “insufficient,” pressing for stronger guarantees on executive appointments and employment in line with Canada’s critical minerals strategy. European Business Magazine (11 November 2025) framed the deal as a precedent-setting case under Ottawa’s updated foreign investment framework, reflecting the state’s determination to capture strategic industrial value from international consolidations.
The contrast between Canadian assertiveness and South African passivity is striking. Teck’s Canadian operations contributed only 3.4% of the combined group’s 2024 revenue, while Anglo’s operations across South Africa, Chile, Peru, and Brazil generated over 90%. Yet it is Canada that secures board representation, capital commitments, and national economic benefits. South Africa, meanwhile, is promised a modest R600 million contribution to a junior exploration fund and the continuation of an R11.2 billion processing project at Sishen — a project announced three years prior to merger negotiations.
This asymmetry extends beyond geography into governance and accountability. Anglo Teck’s governance structure will centralise strategic decision-making in Vancouver, limiting the influence of jurisdictions that contribute the bulk of the company’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA). Gqubule warns that this structure risks entrenching a pattern of “extractive governance” in which the Global South bears operational and environmental risk without corresponding participation in capital allocation or value capture.
The implications for South Africa’s institutional investors are equally significant. The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) collectively hold nearly R69 billion in Anglo and Kumba shares. If Anglo’s South African assets — Kumba, Samancor, and De Beers Consolidated Mines — were to be demerged into a new locally listed entity valued around R150 billion, Gqubule estimates that the state, through the PIC and IDC, could hold approximately 34.5% of the equity. When combined with community and worker trusts, total domestic ownership could reach 50%.
This proposal echoes structural models employed in Chile and Botswana, where resource-linked public ownership has stabilised long-term fiscal returns and enhanced sovereign control. Chile’s state-owned Codelco remains the world’s largest copper producer, while Botswana’s equity partnership with De Beers has delivered sustained developmental dividends. Proponents of Gqubule’s framework argue that a similar state-led consolidation could preserve national mineral leverage and stimulate industrial diversification through domestic beneficiation.
Critics, however, caution that such restructuring could dampen foreign direct investment sentiment and introduce operational inefficiencies. They argue that state-heavy ownership structures may reduce market responsiveness, complicate governance, and deter international capital flows. Nevertheless, even conservative market analysts acknowledge that the Anglo-Teck merger highlights the vulnerability of resource-endowed nations to offshore corporate decision-making.
JP Morgan Cazenove’s September 2025 note characterises the deal as a “strategic realignment of commodity exposure” that will create the world’s second-largest listed copper producer, behind Freeport-McMoRan. The firm projects pre-tax synergies of $800 million within four years and an EBITDA uplift of $1.4 billion between 2024 and 2039. The merged entity’s commodity mix is expected to consist of 72% copper, 22% premium iron ore, and 6% zinc by 2027, aligning it with institutional investor interest in energy-transition metals.
Yet these capital efficiencies come with broader geopolitical trade-offs. The merger consolidates financial and managerial control in the Global North while operational and environmental burdens remain in the Global South. In Latin America, policy analysts have drawn parallels between the Anglo-Teck transaction and the historical pattern of resource centralisation through foreign-controlled conglomerates. Chilean economist Andrés Velasco observed in La Tercera (October 2025) that “this is not simply a merger of assets but a realignment of global mineral power away from the resource countries themselves.”
For South Africa, the stakes extend far beyond corporate restructuring. The deal represents a defining test of the country’s ability to leverage its resource base within a rapidly globalising investment architecture. Gqubule’s concluding argument is not one of isolationism but of strategic repositioning. He contends that South Africa must adopt a deliberate industrial policy that ensures its natural resources underpin domestic development rather than serve as collateral in transnational mergers. “The control of Africa’s mineral wealth,” he writes, “is being restructured not by political decree, but by corporate governance.”
The Anglo-Teck merger thus functions as both a financial transaction and a geopolitical indicator. It reflects the shifting geography of resource ownership, the tightening of Northern regulatory regimes, and the erosion of Southern agency in mineral governance. For South Africa, it is a reminder that globalisation without strategic participation risks becoming economic surrender. Whether the government and domestic investors choose to intervene or acquiesce will shape not only Anglo’s legacy but the country’s position in the evolving architecture of global mineral capital.
As regulatory scrutiny continues in Ottawa, London, and Johannesburg, the final configuration of the deal will determine whether this “merger of equals” becomes a model for balanced international cooperation — or a case study in how the balance of mineral power can be redrawn quietly, without a single mine changing hands.
Read the full research report by Duma Gqubule:
Bring Back Our Minerals and Stop the Merger Between Anglo American and Teck Resources (December 2025)
