Metals: Don’t look now

Rio Tinto and Anglo-American are now firm super-cycle believers. The mining giants, like rivals Xstrata and CVRD, expect demand growth from Asia to keep commodity prices very high for years. But the new conventional wisdom could be wrong, at least partly. In terms of profitability, the super-cycle may already be peaking. Rio’s new chief executive Tom Albanese just led the formerly cautious company to buy the Canadian aluminium maker Alcan for $38bn, all debt-financed. The takeover premium was 6...