Talk:Union Minière du Haut Katanga

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the article states $3.5 billion in profits and $200 million in sales. shouldn't this be $200 billion or $3.5million? I do not have any figures so I did not want to modify it. --edit -- it is 3.5 billion BELGIAN FRANCS and 2 lines later it is US $. would sombody look up the exchange rate at that time to make the article consistent?

I'm not sure whether this is really important, but feel free to look it up. — Itai (f&t) 16:17, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

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[edit] What this article needs

I started writing this article thinking that it will be yet another stub, and am very much surprised to see how it has grown - and there's lots more to add. In my opinion, what this article mostly requires is: A. Headers. (It's too long to be kept headers-free.) B. A picture, although of what is yet to be decided. (The company's logo? A company-owned mine? Company-produced ores? There are many possibilities.) — Itai (f&t) 16:17, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Union Minière still exists

Union Minière de Haut Katanga is still one of Belgium's biggest enterprises. Although the company stopped mining in Congo, their are among Belgium's 20 biggest firms and they are listed in the Bel20. The firm was renamed into Umicore a couple of years ago (during the nineties)

Could you provide a reference? If this is the case, a note to that effect should be added to this article, and a new article created in Umicore. Could you also possibly explain how the UMHK survived the confiscation of its assets, which were reincorporated as Gécamines? — Itai (talk) 19:14, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

http://www.ethesis.net/holdings/holdings_hfst_3.htm (n° 3.5.2) (Text in Dutch). It states that after the nationalization of 1967, Union Minière de Haut Katanga shortened its name to just Union Minière and bought (with the money they received due to the nationalization in Congo), mining companies in the U.S., Canada, Brazil and Belgium. In 1989, when Union Minière's main shareholder Société Générale de Belgique was taken over by the French group Suez, Union Minière became publicly listed on the Brussels' Stock Exchange. On the seventh of October 2000, Société Générale de Belgique sold the last part of its shares. (The Société Générale de Belgique was taken over in 2003 by Tractebel, and was eliminated shortly afterwards). In 2001 Union Minière changed in name into Umicore, because of the fact that mining wasn't its core business any more. Bombshell 12:18, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Well said. I suppose we'll just have to clarify this in the article, and maybe create a new Umicore article (I notice one very short article is to be found in the French Wikipedia). — Itai (talk) 15:33, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Interesting map

The Google map view search for the UMHK [1] presently provides a very interesting map of locations of interest regarding the union. — Itai (talk) 22:19, 6 June 2007 (UTC)