IN THE CROSSHAIRS

‘BHP board in hedge fund's crosshairs’, ran one headline, along with ongoing reportage of the once-hallowed BHP being downgraded left, right and centre by fund managers and analysts. It is almost as if BHP has gone back to being the Broken Hearted People company it was in the late Nineties, before being reborn the early 2000s as BHP Billiton. The Billiton part of it was gleaned from BHP’s merging with former South African mining company Gencor, which morphed into Billiton in a London listing. However, Billiton was recently ignominiously stripped from its title, accompanied by the company bobbing and weaving to avoid the onslaught of shareholder dissatisfaction.