Lonmin heads for end of its road to ruin
Sibanye expected to complete purchase at the end of this year
The final nails are expected to be hammered into the coffin of 106-year-old platinum miner Lonmin this year. The London-listed miner founded by one of the UK's more colourful businessmen of the 20th century, Tiny Rowland, has spent the past decade battling wars it seemingly couldn't win, hamstrung by a platinum price that's still more than 55% off its 2008 high. Later this year, Neal Froneman's Sibanye- Stillwater is expected to complete a purchase of the miner that at one time was part of a conglomerate that owned British newspapers and hotels. While some mark Lonmin's end with a failed mechanisation plan undertaken by former American CEO Brad Mills in 2004, others point to its London domicile as its biggest mistake. An industry commentator, who did not want to be named, said: "You can spend lots of years trying to talk about the mining technique, but the fundamental wrong was that it was controlled from London - the bunch of British businessmen who thought they knew better than So...
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