CITIC FIRST PRINCELING: Larry Yung, son of legendary “red capitalist” Rong Yiren, was once rated the richest tycoon in China. REUTERS/BOBBY YIP A “princeling” tycoon led a multibillion-dollar China Inc’s iron-mining project in Australia. As debacle in losses mount, Hong Kong prosecutors are weighing the Outback charges, Reuters has learned BY DAVID LAGUE HONG KONG, AUGUST 31, 2012 arry Yung Chi-kin is a loyal scion of the Chinese Communist upper L crust. His late father, Rong Yiren, was the legendary “Red Capitalist,” one of the few industrialists to stay behind in the mainland after the revolution of 1949. Yung himself went on to found the con- glomerate CITIC Pacific and become one of China’s richest men. So, when duty called, Larry Yung answered. In 2006, foreign mining giants were jacking up prices of the iron ore needed by China’s voracious steel industry. At the urg- ing of Beijing, Yung and CITIC Pacific ne- gotiated the rights to exploit a vast deposit of low-grade ore in the red-rock landscape of Australia’s remote northwest Pilbara region. The multibillion-dollar deal seemed SPECIAL REPORT 1 CITIC CHINA INC’S DEBACLE IN THE OUTBACK Citic Down Under Citic Pacific bet wrongly on the Aussie dollar in 2008. Now iron ore prices are turning against it. AUSTRALIAN DOLLAR INDEX IRON ORE SPOT PRICE June-July 2008 80 Citic hedges against rising $150 per metric tonne Australian dollar 70 100 Iron-ore prices 60 Sept. 7, 2008 50 are expected to Yung learns of exposure continue sliding to falling currency as China’s economy shows signs of slowing 50 0 2007 '08 '09 '10 '11 '12 '09 '10 '11 '12 Source: Thomson Reuters Datastream to be a coup for China’s resource-hungry further $2 billion in losses. Yung and his But senior Chinese leaders have privately economy. But Yung and Beijing are now long-time deputy, Henry Fan Hung-ling, said they are worried the mine could turn paying a heavy price. were forced to resign that year when Hong into an embarrassing failure, according to A few kilometres down a dirt track off Kong police and regulators launched inves- Australian government officials and foreign the North West Coastal Highway, beside a tigations into the hedging transactions. mining executives. Soaring costs and missed towering pile of red tailings, the company According to people familiar with the in- deadlines in the Pilbara mine have delivered has dug itself into what increasingly looks vestigations, police and regulators in Hong a major setback to China’s global drive to like a bottomless pit. Kong have concluded their probes into sus- secure reliable supplies of key raw materials. The original $2.47 billion budget for pected fraud, theft and disclosure failings. CITIC Pacific’s Australian subsidiary, the massive open-cut mine and processing They have handed their findings to pros- Sino Iron, is scrambling to begin operations complex has blown out to $8 billion and it ecutors in the semi-autonomous city, who at the mine and release a flow of revenue that is more than two years behind schedule. Se- are weighing whether to lay charges against is projected to last for 25 years. Shipments nior company managers won’t rule out a $10 some of China’s highest-profile business fig- were supposed to begin this year, reaching a billion price tag for one of China’s flagship ures in the politically charged matter. pace of 27.6 million tonnes a year. offshore resource investments. “It has the Yung’s office did not return calls re- CITIC Pacific chairman Chang Zhen- potential to be a company killer, that’s for questing comment. A spokeswoman for ming said at the company’s August 16 re- sure,” says Clinton Dines, a former president Hong Kong’s Department of Justice did sults briefing in Hong Kong it now expects of mining giant BHP Billiton in China. not respond to questions about the investi- trial production to begin only in November, It is a dramatic reversal for Yung, 70, gations. Officials in Beijing have been pub- the latest in a series of missed deadlines. who emerged from obscurity after the Cul- licly silent about the probes. “Before the end of the year we should have tural Revolution to become first tycoon production ready for export,” said Chang, a among China’s “princelings,” the children It has the potential to be a veteran of China’s state-owned finance sector and grandchildren of the party elite. company killer, that’s for sure who was drafted in to replace Yung. To compound its pain, CITIC Pacific in The saga speaks to the broader problems 2008 bungled an attempt to hedge against Clinton Dines that China’s state-owned giants are hav- the overruns - exposing the company to a Former BHP Biliton in China president ing as they venture into the wider world. SPECIAL REPORT 2 CITIC CHINA INC’S DEBACLE IN THE OUTBACK RED-ROCK LANDSCAPE: China’s Citic Pacific bought an iron mine in WesternA ustralia’s Pilbara desert, hoping to find a reliable source of cheap iron ore to feed the country’s voracious steel industry. REUTERS/JIM REGAN Resource projects account for most of the research on the project. a tonne in 2000, peaked at almost $200 a $380 billion of total Chinese outbound in- The market outlook isn’t good. Iron-ore tonne last year. In one savage hike in early vestment as of the end of 2011, according prices are expected to continue sliding as 2005, the three miners increased prices by to China’s Ministry of Commerce. Losses China’s economy shows signs of slowing. 71.5 per cent. on these investments have reached almost Australia’s Bureau of Resources and Energy “That really got their attention,” says $27 billion, official media reports say. Economics forecasts ore will average about Shanghai-based Dines, who came under fire Most of it has been blamed on failures to $136 a tonne this year, a drop of about 11 from steelmakers when he represented BHP undertake proper research before deals are per cent from 2011. Some analysts expect in China and now runs hedge fund Caledo- signed. “In many of these cases, my view is steeper declines, with China on track to re- nia Asia. “From that moment, China really that due diligence was either poor, non-ex- cord its first annual drop in steel output in started worrying about securing reliable sup- istent or there was an element of hubris in- more than three decades. plies of raw materials, particularly iron ore, volved,” says Mike Komesaroff, managing It’s a major shift. Years of seemingly and the cost of those materials.” director of Queensland-based Urandaline insatiable Chinese demand delivered a bo- That’s when Larry Yung headed into the Investments, a consultancy specialising in nanza for Australia’s BHP Billiton <BHP. Outback. China’s minerals and metals industries. AX>, the Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto It was the biggest risk he had ever un- CITIC Pacific declined requests for <RIO.AX> and Vale of Brazil <VALES. dertaken, and he was doing it without the interviews with senior managers about SA>, which together account for almost 70 support of his legendary father. the Pilbara mine or answer questions per cent of world sea-borne iron-ore trade. Just five months before CITIC Pacific about its feasibility study and background Ore, which had traded for less than $13 in March 2006 signed agreements to mine SPECIAL REPORT 3 CITIC CHINA INC’S DEBACLE IN THE OUTBACK the Pilbara deposit, Rong Yiren died in Needless to say, this is a His connections did him little good in the Beijing, aged 89. very unhappy event arid outback. Established players had already Rong had become a household name scooped up most of the best deposits of hema- in China after 1949, when he remained in Larry Yung tite, a rich form of iron ore, local miners say. Shanghai and cooperated with Commu- Then Chairman of Citic Pacific CITIC had little choice but to invest in nist efforts to build a socialist economy. As plentiful deposits of lower-grade magnetite the head of the family’s flour-milling and before leading the takeover of an existing ore, which then accounted for less than 1 textile empire, Rong was then estimated to listed company and renaming it CITIC per cent of Australia’s iron ore output. be one of the 10 richest men in China, ac- Pacific. The deal created one of the first “red In 2006, after Yung had visited Australia cording to reports at the time. His only son, chips,” mainland-controlled companies to explore potential investments, CITIC Larry Yung (Rong Zhijian in Mandarin) with shares traded in Hong Kong. Pacific signed a deal for the right to mine lived his early years at the family mansion CITIC Pacific gobbled up investments up to 6 billion tonnes from the Pilbara de- on leafy Kanping Road in what had once in aviation, property, telecoms, tunnels, posit owned by Australian mining entre- been the French Concession. bridges, power plants and mainland steel preneur Clive Palmer. Even under the Communists, Yung was mills. The establishment Swire Group, a Australian officials involved in the discus- extravagant. He drove a red open-topped pillar of colonial Hong Kong, welcomed sions say Yung was a confident and polished sports car around the city and invited him onto the board of its airline subsidiary, host. At a meeting in Hong Kong after the friends and classmates to dine at expensive Cathay Pacific, when CITIC Pacific be- signing, Yung told his Australian guests he restaurants, China’s official media reported.