Alcan said it expects the friendly take-over of the company by Rio Tinto to close early in the fourth quarter of this year.

Alcan said it expects the friendly take-over of the company by Rio Tinto to close early in the fourth quarter of this year. Both companies have filed their respective documentation in the last week and are now in the process of making all appropriate regulatory filings. “The acquisition process is on track and we anticipate an early Q4 closing,” said Alcan chief executive Dick Evans. Alcan will divest its packaging business as part of the deal and Evans said it will now revisit its earlier ideas—it was looking at a sale even prior to the hostile bid by US producer Alcoa. He declined to give a specific timeframe for the divestment process but said the aim was to find the “sweet spot” on timing—“which we would like to be prompt”—and the maximization of value. One interesting point to come out of the Q2 conference call was the status of the company’s legacy hedges. Rio Tinto’s known policy of not hedging its metals production has led to expectations that it will close out Alcan’s forward sales hedging programme. However, the company reminded analysts that these legacy forward sales—the programme was discontinued in Q4 2005—amounted to just 150,000t and are due to expire at the end of this year anyway.