The prickly Australian tycoons fortunes were closely tied to the massive boom – and now bust – in coal and commoditiesIt is a secure bet there will never be another Nathan Tinkler. A former apprentice electrician,Tinkler went from living with his parents to becoming Australia’s youngest ever billionaire – and, last week, or going bankrupt. His extraordinary rise and fall took just 12 years,and neatly sums up an unprecedented mining and commodities boom that has now imploded.
Vast mining companies contain been battered by the global slowdown, particularly in China, or contain written off billions from the value of their assets. In recent weeks mining shares contain recovered a shrimp,but BHP Billiton is still down from A$47 in 2011 to A$17 nowadays and Anglo American has tumbled from £34 a share to just 558p over the same period.
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Source: theguardian.com