Is mining set for a new wave of mega-mergers?

The defining deal of the mining industry’s last merger wave never happened. bhp Billiton’s audacious $150bn bid in 2008 for a rival, Rio Tinto, which would have created a commodities super-group, captured the debt-fuelled spirit of the commodities “supercycle” of the 2000s. As China’s growth slowed and the miners’ capital spending peaked, things fell back to earth. The industry has atoned for its sins by cleaning up its…