Peabody Energy: The pits

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UK Only Article: 
standard article

Issue: 

Beautiful minds, wasted

Fly Title: 

Peabody Energy

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Marching on

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The world’s biggest coal miner goes bust

Marching on

“MAKE No Mistake: The Age of Coal Marches On”. So reads a headline on the website of “Advanced Energy for Life”, an advertising campaign led by Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private coal company, whose flair for public-relations guff looks boundless. No amount of image-scrubbing could help it on April 13th, though. The American firm, with debts of billion, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Its boss, Glenn Kellow, blamed a “historically challenged industry backdrop”.
The industry is indeed in a hole, beset by pricing and pollution problems, plus NGO pressure on creditors and investors to pull out their money. But Peabody’s problems are also of its own making. It raised big debts to buy an Australian firm, Macarthur Coal, for .2 billion in 2011, aiming to bolster sales of metallurgical coal to China …
Source: Utilities
Peabody Energy: The pits