Is Bhp Billiton British, Australian or South African?

[Lee_1]

How does its multi listings work? If you buy in SA are you only buying its SA interests? Are all its assets owned in Aus? Please educate me.

[SimonPB]

it si the same share tradable on any of the 3 exchanges. But exchange contreols prevent us from doing that.

[Werner_1]

BHP Billiton is a result of 2 companies that merged, one being BHP (Australian) and other Billiton (British) - so in actual fact the merged entity is British/Australian, but traded on many exchanges worldwide, including the JSE.

[Werner_1]

Simon, if one buys the BHP shares on NYSE obviously they all represent the same company, so is it fair to try to calculate the difference between the different listing and hope to get a relatively similar price, e.g. take the NYSE listing and do the ZAR-USD conversion to see how close it is to the JSE price? or does it not work like that? I saw SASOL's NYSE listing a few weeks ago offered a much better div yield than the JSE listing, any reason besides the share in NYSE falling more than JSE and the same div is paid??

[SimonPB]

Billiton was an SA company listed in London (the old Gencor mining). Yes the share price will be largely the same taking into accoutn exchage rates (USA trade ADR's, which is 2 for every BIL). The real price is set were the most volume happens (more or less).

[Werner_1]

Thanks for correcting me... for BIL, which is the largest volume market, LSE / ASX - possibly not JSE?

[SimonPB]

well OZ not important as they are in the wrong time zone. So London the likely answer.

[Werner_1]

cool. i thought that would be the case...