Sector movers: Miners fall as PBOC rate cut underwhelms

Mining stocks declined on Monday as investors shrugged off some improving economic data from top metals user China and a rate cut by its central bank in an attempt to boost growth.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point for the second time in three months, to 5.35%, and lowered its one-year benchmark deposit rate by the same amount to 2.5%.

Analyst Craig Erlam from Oanda said the rate cut only had a limited impact on the markets "in a sign that people remain unconvinced about the PBOC’s ability to shore up the slowing economy".

"The PBOC had to do something but markets are clearly not that impressed. A more significant slowdown looks inevitable, the only question is if a hard landing can be avoided," he said.

There were contrasting data reports on Chinese manufacturing activity released overnight, but they broadly indicated an up-trend in growth for the sector. Both the HSBC/Markit and government purchasing managers’ indices both came in ahead of expectations, though the latter continued to signal a contraction, remaining under the break-even mark of 50.

Rio Tinto was declining 1.7% on the back of rumours it could exit from the coal market, which accounted for around 7% of group revenues in 2014.

According to Reuters over the weekend, last week's restructuring of Rio's business structure - rolling its coal and uranium businesses into other operating divisions - signalled a possible move away from coal and potential buyers such Glencore could be interested in the assets.

"Synergies have been previously flagged between Rio Tinto’s and Glencore’s Australian coal businesses, most notably Hunter Valley," said analysts at Investec. "However, we doubt Glencore is in a position to pay a high price for coal assets in the current environment particularly in light of reported output cuts due to weak pricing."

Glencore, which reports it full-year results on Tuesday, was trading around 0.1% lower.

Rio Tinto was also making headlines after the Australian Workers Union lambasted the company and fellow miner BHP Billiton for "their cartel-like behaviour". BHP was down 1.5% in afternoon trade.

Other miners such as Fresnillo, Randgold Resources, Anglo American, Vedanta Resources and KAZ Minerals were also trading in the red.

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