How many guys does it take to build an Automated Teller Machine (ATM)? Two

How many guys does it take to build an Automated Teller Machine (ATM)? Two.

OK.  Not really. That’s a bit of an oversimplification but it has at least a kernel of truth.

Luther Simjian held patents on all kinds of things – including an army flight simulator, a colour x-ray machine, a self-focusing camera, an exercise bicycle and a teleprompter – but he was best known for his work on the Bankograph, a machine that could accept cash or check deposits at any hour of the day or night.

Simjian’s Bankograph was able to accept cash or check deposits at all hours. He sold his machine to a New York City bank in 1960, but the idea didn’t really catch on with most customers at the time, although a revolution in customer oriented automation was just around the corner, and would also include photobooths, candy dispensers and gas stations, noted Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, and Robert J.K. Reid, of the University of Leicester and University of Glasgow, respectively, in their academic paper, Evidence from the Patent Record on the Development of Cash Dispensing Technology, produced for the New York-based Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 2008 History of Telecommunications Conference. Bernardo Batiz-Lazo is currently a professor of business history and bank management at Bangor University in Wales. He is also the co-author, with Tom R. Harper, of the 2013 book Cash Box: The Invention and Globalization of the ATM. Batiz-Lazo is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and is a world-class authority on the automation of banking, financial technology, and cashless retail payment. Robert J.K. Reid is with the Department of Economic & Social History at the University of Glasgow.

“The only people using the machines were prostitutes and gamblers who didn’t want to deal with tellers face to face,” Simjian told the A&E Television Network’s History channel. “The most successful early deployments took place in Europe, where bankers responded to increasing unionization and rising labor costs by soliciting engineers to develop a solution for after-hours cash distribution,” Batiz-Lazo wrote for The Atlantic magazine in a March 26, 2015 article headlined, A Brief History of the ATM: How automation changed retail banking, an Object Lesson. In the cross-disciplinary 2004 volume, Wiring Prometheus: Globalisation, History and Technology, edited by Peter Lyth, a lecturer in German history at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and Helmuth Trischler, head of the research department of the Deutches Museum and Professor of History and History of Technology at the University of Munich in Germany, Aberystwyth University Welsh historian Richard Coopey, however, concluded that banks “in the United States and Britain considered direct costs a minor factor of purchasing systems …. [they] had little, if any, accurate idea of the cost-benefits of computing.” 

In an article headlined. “Fast Machine With a Buck”, Pacific Star and Stripes reported on July 7, 1966 on a Japanese device called the “Computer Loan Machine, ” which supplied cash as a three-month loan at a five per cent interest rate per annum after inserting a credit card in the machine.

While Simjian’s American machine was useful for people who just wanted to make deposits, it took another inventor to create a machine that could dispense cash. That inventor was England’s John Shepherd-Barron, who in 1965 got the idea for a cash-dispensing machine while taking a bath after finding his bank closed. It was his habit to withdraw money on a Saturday, but on this particular weekend he had arrived one minute late and found the bank doors locked. He was inspired by chocolate vending machines: “It struck me there must be a way I could get my own money, anywhere in the world or the UK. I hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser, but replacing chocolate with cash,” Shepherd-Barron later said. He sold his idea to London-based Barclays Bank.

He bumped into the chief general manager of Barclays Bank later in 1965, who was about to have lunch. Over a pink gin, Shepherd-Barron asked him for 90 seconds to pitch his idea for a cash machine,” The Telegraph recalled in May 2010.

“I told him I had an idea that if you put your standard Barclays cheque through a slot in the side of the bank, it will deliver standard amounts of money around the clock.

“He said, ‘Come and see me on Monday morning’.”

Barclays commissioned Shepherd-Barron to build six cash dispensers, the first of which was installed at a branch in the north London suburb of Enfield on June 27 1967, and was a signal moment marking the dawn of contemporary digital banking. The actor Reg Varney, star of the ITV sitcom On the Buses, was on hand to be the first to withdraw cash. Two other independent machines were also deployed in 1967, notes the Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based ATM Industry Association (ATMIA). One was located in Uppsala, Sweden,designed by Asea-Metior (today ABB) at the behest of the Swedish savings banks.This machine was called Bankomat. A second device was engineered by Chubb for the Westminster Bank (today RBS Group) in London.

Shepherd-Barron also came up with the idea of a four-digit PIN. When Shepherd-Barron was conceptualizing PINs, he envisioned them being six digits – it was his wife who suggested they be four.

“Over the kitchen table, she said she could only remember four figures, so because of her, four figures became the world standard,” he later told BBC News.

With plastic bank cards bearing magnetic strips yet to be invented, Shepherd-Barron’s early machines used special cheques that were chemically coded by being infused with carbon-14, a radioactive isotope. Customers placed the cheque in a drawer, the machine detected the material and matched the cheque against a PIN before paying out. The maximum withdrawal originally was £10 or about $14.

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) unveiled its first Canadian automated teller machine called a “24 hour cash dispenser,” on Dec. 1, 1969.

By 1970, several U.S. banks had invested in ATMs. One Ohio-based bank tried to appeal to female customers by advertising their new machines with commercials that played every 25 minutes during a six-hour Paul Newman movie marathon.

ATMs really started to catch on in the United States in January 1978 after New York City was hit by a huge blizzard that shut down banks for days. Citibank had invested millions into installing ATMs all over the city the previous year, so people could still get cash even though banks were closed. During the blizzard’s aftermath, ATM use increased by 20 per cent.

According to Smithsonian magazine, there are two Wells Fargo ATMs at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. In a 2010 interview with NeedCoffee.com, David Parker, senior vice president of digital branch & ATM at Wells Fargo, explained that one operates as a backup machine and only one ATM actually functions at a time.

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Amelia Earhart: The story that keeps on giving

As a blogger, you get to know your reading audience a bit over time, and perhaps get some sense of what they like and probably expect you to write about. For me, the range of topics I’ll delve into is a bit eclectic, but posts about the smoke of Satan in the Vatican or missing aviators always prove to be sure-fire winners.

I first blogged in soundingsjohnbarker (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com) about Amelia Earhart in a post headlined “Missing aviators: Our continuing fascination” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/missing-aviators-our-continuing-fascination/) on Sept. 8, 2014, although I had written some earlier newspaper columns over the years about the story.

On July 2, 1937, the Lockheed Electra 10E aircraft carrying 39-year-old American aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Frederick Noonan, 44, was reported missing near Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean.

The pair were attempting to fly around the world when they lost their bearings during the most challenging leg of the global journey from Lae, the capital of Morobe Province and the second-largest city in Papua New Guinea, to Howland Island, a tiny uninhabited coral island 2,227 nautical miles away, located just north of the equator in the central Pacific Ocean, about 1,700 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca was in sporadic radio contact with Earhart as she approached Howland Island and received messages that she was lost and running low on fuel. No trace of Earhart or Noonan was ever found.

The disappearance of international aviator Earhart and navigator Noonan – in the midst of the worldwide Great Depression and concomitant with the rise of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism in Germany, Benito Mussolini and fascism in Italy and the Greater Japanese Empire of Imperial Japan in the Far East, soon to collectively form the Axis powers of the Second World War – would prove riveting beyond even human interest, as something of a cautionary tale perhaps about entente d engagement to Isolationist America.

Journalists love anniversary dates to generate new takes on old stories, and never more so than during the summer, when new news is often slow and hard to come by.

Earhart disappeared 80 years ago last Sunday. Yesterday, NBC News and other media outlets had a flurry of stories on a newly discovered photograph from an Office of Naval Intelligence file in the U.S. National Archives that some believe suggests Earhart and Noonan survived a crash-landing on Jaluit Atoll in the then Japanese-controlled Marshall Islands.

“The photo, found in a long-forgotten file in the National Archives, shows a woman who resembles Earhart and a man who appears to be her navigator, Fred Noonan, on a dock,” says NBC News (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/amelia-earhart-may-have-survived-crash-landing-never-seen-photo-n779591). “The discovery is featured in a new History channel special, Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence that airs July 9.”

Shawn Henry, a former executive assistant director for the FBI and an NBC News analyst, believes the photo is undoctored and shows the famed pilot and her navigator.

“When you pull out, and when you see the analysis that’s been done, I think it leaves no doubt to the viewers that that’s Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan,” Henry told NBC News.

Les Kinney, a retired government investigator who has spent 15 years looking for Earhart clues, said the photo “clearly indicates that Earhart was captured by the Japanese.”

Leave it to those picky fact-checking Brits to throw cold water on the story. BBC News in a story earlier today headlined “Amelia Earhart: Does photo show she died a Japanese prisoner?” (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40515754) quotes Ric Gillespie, author of Finding Amelia and executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), as being unconvinced: “This photograph has people convinced. I’m astounded by this. I mean, my God! Look at this photograph… Let’s use our heads for a moment. It’s undated. They think it’s from 1937. Okay. If it’s from July 1, 1937 then it can’t be Amelia, because she hadn’t taken off yet.

“If it’s from 1935 or 1938 it can’t be her…. This photograph has to have been taken within a very narrow window – within a couple of days of when she disappeared.

“And what does the photo say that it shows? … Jaluit Atoll – Jaluit Island. It doesn’t say ‘Amelia Earhart in Japanese custody’!

“If this is a picture of Amelia Earhart in Japanese custody, where are the Japanese? There are no soldiers in this picture. Nobody in uniform,” Gillespie observed.

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Owney, the renowned United States Railway Mail Service traveling mutt from Albany, even visited Winnipeg in June 1895

Between 1888 and 1897, Owney, the renowned United States Railway Mail Service unofficial but beloved mascot dog, traveled by mail car around the United States and Canada, then by steamer to other countries including Japan, China, Singapore and elsewhere.

Owney was apparently attracted to the texture or scent of the mailbags and when his master moved away from Albany, New York’s post office, Owney remained behind with his new mail clerk friends. A decidedly scruffy little Irish-Scottish Terrier mongrel mutt, Owney became a regular fixture at the Albany, New York post office in 1888. His owner was likely a postal clerk who let the dog walk him to work, figures the United States National Postal Museum, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

At first, he followed them onto mail wagons and then onto mail trains. And then Owney began to ride with the bags on Railway Post Office (RPO) train cars across New York state, and then the rest of the contiguous 48 states. Owney usually slept on the mail bags.

In 1895 Owney made an around-the-world trip, traveling with mailbags on trains and steamships to Asia and across Europe, before returning to Albany on Dec. 23, 1895, after his world tour. He traveled over 140,000 miles in his lifetime. One of his stops was right here in Manitoba in Winnipeg on June 27, 1895. We even gave him the gold dog tag to prove he visited us. And because his mail clerk friends back home collected them for him. Even United States Postmaster General John Wanamaker was one of Owney’s fans. When he learned that the dog’s collar was weighed down by an ever-growing number of tags, he gave Owney a harness on which to display his travel badges of honor.

“Railway mail clerks considered the dog a good luck charm. At a time when train wrecks were all too common, no train Owney rode was ever in a wreck. The Railway mail clerks adopted Owney as their unofficial mascot, marking his travels by placing medals and tags on his collar. Each time Owney returned home to Albany, the clerks there saved the tags, says the United States National Postal Museum, located in the historic City Post Office Building, which was constructed in 1914 and served as the Washington, D.C., post office from 1914 through 1986.

Owney was a faithful guardian of railway mail and the bags it was carried in, and would not allow anyone other than mail clerks to touch the bags.

On April 9, 1894, a writer for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that “Nearly every place he stopped Owney received an additional tag, until now he wears a big bunch. When he jogs along, they jingle like the bells on a junk wagon.”  The National Postal Museum opened on July 30, 1993. It was created on November 6, 1990 in a joint agreement between the Smithsonian Institution and the United States Postal Service. The United States National Philatelic Collection, however, dates back to 1886 – just before the dawn of the Owney-era dog decade appropriately enough – and was established at the Smithsonian in 1886 with the donation of a sheet of 10-cent Confederate postage stamps. From 1908 until 1963, the National Philatelic Collection was housed in the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building on the National Mall.  And then in 1964, the collection was moved to what is now known as the National Museum of American History, before moving to its current home almost 23 years ago.

Now sadly (citing my wanting to let Budderball be cut loose for disobedience during a spacewalk in the 2009 Disney movie Space Buddies, Jeanette says you can’t do this in a dog story without leaving kids in tears, but it has to be done in this case,  I’m afraid) in June 1897, Owney boarded a mail train for Toledo, Ohio. While he was there, he was shown to a newspaper reporter by a postal clerk. Owney became ill tempered and “although the exact circumstances were not satisfactorily reported,” the United States National Postal Museum says in its account, “Owney died in Toledo of a bullet wound on June 11, 1897.”

Of course the dog became ill-tempered being shown to a newspaper reporter? Wouldn’t you be?

Well, actually, in the confusion it seems Owney may have bitten a mail clerk, not the reporter! And it appears it was Toledo Postmaster Rudolph Brand who called for a policeman to come to the scene and that an officer named Fred Free (you can’t make this stuff up), shot and killed Owney while he was chained to a post (the dog, not Free).

The Chicago Tribune called it an “execution.”

Other newspapers spun the story many different ways. One account says that Owney detested being tied up or restrained and started protesting loudly and when the clerk tried to get him to quiet down, Owney bit him on the hand. Other stories said Owney had been running loose at the time.

One suspects, however, Owney’s place in history may rank higher than the newspaper reporter or the police officer, whatever happened in Toledo in 1897. Owney’s life and travels have inspired several children’s books. Elementary schools across the United States continue to use the story of Owney as a way to connect their students with those in other states by sending stuffed toy dogs from school to school through the mail accompanied by messages from students to one another. Owney was featured on his own postage stamp by the U.S. Postal Service in 2011.

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Happy Canada Day from the True North: Land of Back Bacon, Pickerel, the Maple Leaf, Beaver, Moose and Loon, eh

Here’s some food for thought from Ipsos Reid’s annual Canada Day survey conducted between June 12 and June 15 on behalf of Historica Canada, formerly known as the Historica-Dominion Institute, as you get ready to hoist the cold libation of your choice tomorrow to perhaps toast Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, and mark Canada’s 148th birthday.

Historica Canada is a national charitable organization that was launched in September 2009 as the Historica-Dominion Institute, through the amalgamation of two existing organizations: The Historica Foundation of Canada and the Dominion Institute. The Historica Foundation of Canada was launched in October 1999, while the Dominion Institute was formed in 1997 by a group of young professionals, concerned about the erosion of a common memory and civic identity in Canada.

While Ipsos Reid assures us their sample of 1,005 Canadians from Ipsos’ panel interviewed online was weighted to balance demographics “to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the adult population according to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe,” I wonder? Does it really matter that much? It’s the all-too-short summer barbecue season in Canada, time to have some fun, without worrying too much about how the sample was constructed. It’s a Canada Day poll after all, not say a … provincial election seats results prediction poll!

Don’t get me wrong. I have worked in public opinion research on-and-off, sometimes between journalism gigs, since 1980, including working as a supervisor for Cambridge Survey Research where I supervised telephone call center employees for Democratic National Committee (DNC) pollster Pat Caddell’s firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the 1980 Carter-Reagan presidential election campaign. Earlier the same year, I worked as a field interviewer in Peterborough, Ontario for Opinion Place/Marketing Insights, a Winnipeg company, doing a 1980 Quebec Referendum survey for the Center for Canadian Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. So when Ipsos Reid says the precision of their Canada Day poll is accurate to a confidence or credibility interval of plus or minus 3.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadian adults been polled with the margin of expected sampling, coverage, measurement and perhaps other errors, as well as a confidence or credibility interval that is wider among subsets of the population, I’m suitably impressed.

And then I go back to the barbecue. Or perhaps my mother’s black cast-iron skillet if it is breakfast time.  Ipsos Reid  says 35 per cent of Canadians named back bacon as Canada’s national food, beating out poutine, named by only 30 per cent, for the top spot this year. Salmon, whether Atlantic or Pacific, trailed at a distant third (personally, I’d have opted for Paint Lake pickerel, a regional delicacy of Northern Manitoba), named by 17 per cent, followed by beavertails at eight per cent; tourtière at six per cent and doughnuts (which is how we’ll spell it for Canada Day) at four per cent.

Other fascinating tidbits include such illuminating facts as only 12 per cent of us have had the opportunity to go out dog-sledding.

When it comes to Canadian symbols, the beaver ranks up with the maple leaf, and 64 per cent of Canadians have seen a beaver in the wild, followed by moose at 60 per cent, edging out loons at 59 per cent and a bear in the wild at 55 per cent. Meanwhile 16 per cent of Canadians say they  have never seen any of these animals,  Ipsos Reid reports. If you live in Toronto or Vancouver, well, take your dog-sledding stats for guidance. Could happen, I suppose, but back bacon is a better bet. Trust me.

Respondents were asked which musician they are proudest to call Canadian. Nearly four in 10  (38 per cent) chose Celine Dion from a list which also included Kingston’s The Tragically Hip (picked by 14 per cent), Nickelback (11 per cent), Blue Rodeo (nine per cent), Drake (six per cent), Justin Bieber (two per cent), or some other musician or group (20 per cent). Given that Neil Young, The Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, April Wine, the Stampeders, A Foot in Coldwater and Loverboy, just to name half a dozen or so others, are apparently absent from the top of the list, I’ve concluded this must be the result of the confidence or credibility interval that I mentioned earlier. Or, perhaps more likely even, the fact my tastes in Canadian music apparently haven’t quite arrived in the 21st century yet. A possibility not to be discounted, to be sure.

Five years ago, the Historica-Dominion Institute, in partnership with the Munk School of Global Affairs and with the support of the Aurea Foundation, conducted an online survey, “Canada and the World in 2010,” which was also conducted for it by pollster Ipsos Reid and had more than 18,000 respondents in 24 countries.

The survey found, among many other things, Canadians sometimes overestimate their own influence in world affairs:

While two in three Canadians (67 per cent) agreed in 2010 that Canada had an influence on the world stage, only 55 per cent of global respondents agreed. Those polled in Brazil and India were most likely (both 74 per cent) to agree that Canada had influence in world affairs, while only one third of Japanese and Swedes agreed, making them least likely of the 24 countries polled to believe that Canada is influential on the world stage.

For Americans, Independence Day Saturday on July 4 marks the defeat of the British Redcoats in the War of Independence in 1783, although some Southerners still mourn it as the date in 1863 when Vicksburg, Mississippi fell to Union troops in the War Between the States or Civil War.

Canada being Canada and Canadians being Canadians, we quintessentially mark July 1 with what might appear to outsiders to be a rather odd mix of reticence, pride and ambivalence. Me? I like to recall that it was on Canada Day 2007 I arrived to live in Manitoba!

Sometimes we forget just how remarkable an achievement Canada was in 1867. In the spring of 1864, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island were contemplating the possibility of Maritime Union. But nothing concrete happened until the Province of Canada, springing from the legislative union of Canada East and Canada West, heard of the proposed conference and members of the combined legislature requested permission to attend the meeting of the Maritime colonies, in order to raise the larger subject of British North American union.

Delegates from away arrived by steamer in Prince Edward Island and shared the spotlight with the first circus to visit the island in more than 20 years. No kidding. How absolutely Canadian can you get?

The historic Charlottetown Conference took place from Sept. 1 to 9, 1864. My ancestral Acadian roots are on the saltwater Tantramar marshes of Amherst, Nova Scotia, in Cumberland County on the Isthmus of Chignecto at the head of the Bay of Fundy and Missiguash River, bordering New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and connecting the Nova Scotia peninsula with those who come from away elsewhere in North America. From Amherst came four of the 36 Fathers of Confederation, more than any other city or town in Canada:  Robert Barry Dickey, Edward Barron Chandler, Jonathan McCully, and Sir Charles Tupper, a Conservative who went onto serve as Canada’s sixth prime minister briefly in 1896.  While he was born in Amherst, Chandler was best known as a New Brunswick legislator.

Tupper was also a medical doctor and founded Pugsley’s Pharmacy, dispensing chemists, at 63 Victoria Street East in downtown Amherst in 1843, the same year he became a doctor. Tupper was president of the Medical Society of Nova Scotia in 1863, and was the first president of the Canadian Medical Association from 1867 to 1870. Pugsley’s operated at the same location in the same historic Tupper Block building, as the oldest business in town and one of the oldest pharmacies in Canada, for 169 years until May 2012.

While there are differing historical opinions as to who should be considered a Father of Confederation, traditionally they have been defined as the 36 men who attended one or more of the three conferences held at Charlottetown; Québec City from Oct. 10 to 27, 1864; and London, England from Dec. 4, 1866 to Feb. 11, 1867 to discuss the union of British North America, preceding Confederation on July 1, 1867. Negotiators settled on the name “Dominion of Canada,” proposed by the head of the New Brunswick delegation, Samuel Leonard Tilley.  The word dominion was taken from the King James Bible: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth” (Psalm 72:8). Tilley, who had a background in pharmacy, became the minister of customs in Sir John A. Macdonald’s first cabinet in 1867.

As a Canadian, it also remains an uncommon privilege for me to have to sat in the public gallery in the balcony of historic Province House in Charlottetown, designed and built by local architect Isaac Smith and completed in 1847, to accommodate the legislative assembly of Prince Edward Island. To this day, the assembly has only 27 seats for the members from the ridings of Souris-Elmira through to Tignish-Palmer Road.

The July 1 holiday was established by statute in 1879, under the name Dominion Day. There is no record of organized ceremonies after the first anniversary, except for the 50th anniversary of Confederation in 1917, at which time the new Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, under construction, was dedicated as a memorial to the Fathers of Confederation and to the valour of Canadians fighting in the First World War in Europe.

The next celebration was held in 1927 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation.

Since 1958, the federal government has arranged for an annual observance of Canada’s national day on July 1.

Well done, Sir John A.

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Will we see the return of Inco Ltd. to TSX next summer as Vale re-thinks base metals?

Iron ore accounts for three-fourths of Brazilian mining giant Vale’s revenue.  With economic growth in China slowing and iron-ore production from Vale’s rivals in Australia speeding up, the benchmark price for the steel-making material has fallen to around $70-$75 per metric ton recently, little more than one-third of the 2011 peak of around $190 per metric ton. Mining analysts estimate that it costs Vale $67 to produce a metric ton of iron ore and ship it to China, making for a very tight profit margin at current commodity prices. Vale’s shares as of last week had fallen 42 per cent year-to-date. What to do?

Vale CEO Murilo Ferreira, in an annual presentation to investors Dec. 2, said the company is considering selling shares of between 30 per cent and 40 per cent of its base-metals division. The division is made up primarily of copper and nickel mines in Brazil, in Indonesia’s island province of Sulawesi, an hour’s flight north of Bali, on the southern tip of Grand Terre, the main island in New Caledonia, an overseas territory of France, east of Australia, and Canada, including nickel mining, milling, smelting and refining in Thompson, Manitoba, where copper and cobalt, along with associated gold, silver, platinum, sulphur, selenium and palladium deposits, are also mined.

The Initial Public Offering (IPO) would be intended, Ferreira said, to “unlock” value in the base metals division, although specifics haven’t been worked out nor has the sale been proposed to Vale’s board of directors. The Thompson smelter and refinery, which opened March 25, 1961, was the free world’s first fully integrated nickel operation and built at a cost of $185 million. Mining analysts believe Vale’s base metals division may be worth $30-billion to $35-billion, including the assumption of debt.

Rio de Janeiro-based Vale has mining operations on five continents in 38 countries. Its base metals business is headquartered in Toronto. Vale is the second largest mining company in the world by market capitalization, surpassed only by Melbourne, Australia-based BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP), and the second-largest nickel producer after Moscow-based OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel. About 75 percent of Vale’s nickel production comes from Canada. Vale is the world’s largest iron-ore producer.

Ferreira said an IPO would hinge on a “fair price” for the base metals shares. Thompson Reuters data suggests such an IPO could  raise $5-billion to $8-billion, making it the biggest in Canadian history, eclipsing Manulife Financial Corp.’s record $2.12-billion IPO in 1999.

Vale would use the money realized from an IPO pay for key projects in the midst of sliding iron ore prices. While the base metals business is highly profitable for Vale, analysts see it as a lost division with the larger company focus on iron ore.

Nickel prices peaked at $25.51 per pound on the London Metal Exchange (LME) in May 2007 just months after Vale bought Inco Ltd. in a $19.9-billion all-cash tender takeover offer deal in October 2006.  In December 2008, nickel briefly dipped below $4 per pound and was $4.31 per pound on March 9, 2009 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a 12-year low of 6,547.05 – its lowest close since April 1997, losing 20 per cent of its value in only six weeks.

Scotiabank said in mid-April it now expects nickel to average $7.66 (U.S.) per pound this year. At the beginning of 2014, nickel was about US$6.50 per pound, compared to just under US$8 per pound a year earlier. The LME price today is $7.43 (U.S.) per pound, with the price being supported less by demand than supply restrictions because Indonesia, the world’s largest nickel producer, last January 2014 banned all exports of unprocessed nickel ore. Indonesia’s Constitutional Court recently upheld the legality of the ban. Nickel has risen 19 percent this year, the most among six main metals traded on the LME and has made the third-biggest gain in the Bloomberg Commodity Index of 22 raw materials.

The Wall Street Journal’s Paul Kiernan reported Dec. 2 Vale “failed to round up buyers for some nickel operations in Canada, according to two people familiar with the matter. Last year, Vale tried to get a partner to buy into the sprawling operation at Thompson, Manitoba, which includes two mills and a refinery, and this turned into an attempt to sell assets, one of the people said.” Vale’s Chief Financial Officer Luciano Siani is reported in the same story to have said the “Thompson complex isn’t for sale.”

Jennifer Maki, a chartered accountant who joined Vale in Canada almost 12 years ago in January 2003, was named Nov. 14  as Vale’s executive director of base metals as Peter Poppinga replaced long-serving José Carlos Martins as executive director for ferrous minerals.

Poppinga, who had replaced Tito Martins as chief executive officer of Vale Canada and executive director of base metals and information technology in November 2011, led 16 operating sites around the world and in Vale’s quest for asset base optimization over the last three years.

Maki, who has an undergraduate degree in commerce from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, has served as executive vice-president and chief financial officer of Vale Canada since September 2007. Before joining Vale as an assistant controller for financial planning in 2003, she had worked as a chartered accountant for PricewaterhouseCoopers for almost 10 years.

In a March 2013 interview with Upfront, the in-house magazine of PricewaterhouseCoopers, her former employer, Maki observed, among other things, that Vale’s “workforce in Brazil, for example, is much more mobile and they’re much more willing to pursue opportunities outside of their home cities and towns than people are in Canada.” Maki, commenting on how Inco’s culture changed after its 2007 merger with Vale, said, ” We’ve probably become more performance driven by key performance indicators and metrics. You see it right through Vale from their compensation packages to how people are rewarded. I think part of that is coming from a country like Brazil, where there’s a very hungry group of people who have grown up in a developing country. I think they’ve instilled that here and made some major changes across our Canadian operations.”

Since last January, Maki has been the chief financial and administrative officer for base metals, as well as participating in the management of base metals businesses outside Canada. She has been a member of the Board of Commissioners of PT Vale Indonesia Tbk (PTVI) since 2007 and recently became its president commissioner.

Poppinga was born in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from Fundacao Dom Cabral in Brazil. He received a degree in geology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1980 and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Erlangen, Germany and a post-graduate degree in geology and mine engineering from Clausthal University of Technology in Clausthal-Zellerfeld Germany in 1984, with specialist diplomas in geo-statistics from the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and strategic mega trends from Asia Focus, Kellogg Singapore.

He speaks four languages including Portuguese, English, German and French. He worked for S.A. Mineracao da Trindade (SAMITRI) from 1984 until it was acquired by Vale in 1999, when he joined Vale as commercial director and general manager of the iron ore business in New York for Vale subsidiary Rio Doce America before moving to Rio Doce International, Belgium where he led Vale’s market and sales activities in Europe from 2000 to 2004. Between 2005 and 2007, he was president of Vale International S.A. in Switzerland, and from 2008 until the end of 2009 he was executive vice-president human resources at Vale (then Vale Inco) in Toronto.

In January 2010, Poppinga moved to Australia when he was named vice-president for base metals operations for the Asia and Pacific region where he was responsible for operations in Indonesia, New Caledonia, China and Japan.

Ferreira is a former CEO of Vale Canada, serving almost two years as the top Vale official in Canada, starting when the Brazilian mining giant finalized its purchase of Inco in January 2007. He had originally joined Vale in 1977. In 1998 he was appointed executive officer of commerce and finance at Vale do Rio Doce Alumínio S.A.-ALUVALE, a holding company of Vale that was merged into Vale in December 2003. Much of his experience is in aluminum and ferroalloys.

He was chief executive officer of Vale Inco, currently known as Vale Canada, in Toronto and executive director of nickel and base metals sales of Vale when he left the company for personal reasons at the end of 2008 and was replaced by Tito Martins. Ferreira rejoined Vale and replaced Roger Agnelli as CEO on May 22, 2011.

Vale is controlled by Valepar SA, which is owned by Previ, the employee pension fund of state-controlled Banco do Brasil SA; Bradespar SA, an industrial holding company; Mitsui & Co, Japan’s second-largest trading company; BNDES Participações SA, or BNDESpar, and Elétron – and the Brazilian government owns 12 so-called “golden shares” in Vale that gives it veto power over corporate decisions. Created on June 1, 1942 by the Brazilian government, Vale was privatized on May 7, 1997.

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Jennifer Maki takes over as Vale’s executive director of base metals as Peter Poppinga replaces José Carlos Martins as executive director for ferrous minerals; Vale CEO Murilo Ferreira joins Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Paul Davis in Long Harbour to mark nickel production at the new processing plant

Jennifer Maki, a chartered accountant who joined Vale in Canada almost 12 years ago in January 2003, was named Nov. 14  as Vale’s executive director of base metals as Peter Poppinga replaces  José Carlos Martins as executive director for ferrous minerals. Martins left the company as iron ore, which is the Brazilian mining giant’s main commodity, continues to slump in price with no end in sight.

Poppinga, who had replaced Tito Martins as chief executive officer of Vale Canada and executive director of base metals and information technology in November 2011, led 16 operating sites around the world and in Vale’s quest for asset base optimization over the last three years.

Maki, who has an undergraduate degree in commerce from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, has served as executive vice-president and chief financial officer of Vale Canada since September 2007. Before joining Vale as an assistant controller for financial planning in 2003, she had worked as a chartered accountant for PricewaterhouseCoopers for almost 10 years.

In a March 2013 interview with Upfront, the in-house magazine of PricewaterhouseCoopers, her former employer, Maki observed, among other things, that Vale’s “workforce in Brazil, for example, is much more mobile and they’re much more willing to pursue opportunities outside of their home cities and towns than people are in Canada.” Maki, commenting on how Inco’s culture changed after its 2007 merger with Vale, said, ” We’ve probably become more performance driven by key performance indicators and metrics. You see it right through Vale from their compensation packages to how people are rewarded. I think part of that is coming from a country like Brazil, where there’s a very hungry group of people who have grown up in a developing country. I think they’ve instilled that here and made some major changes across our Canadian operations.”

Since last January, Maki has been the chief financial and administrative officer for base metals, as well as participating in the management of base metals businesses outside Canada. She has been a member of the Board of Commissioners of PT Vale Indonesia Tbk (PTVI) since 2007 and recently became its president commissioner.

Poppinga was born in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from Fundacao Dom Cabral in Brazil. He received a degree in geology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1980 and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Erlangen, Germany and a post-graduate degree in geology and mine engineering from Clausthal University of Technology in Clausthal-Zellerfeld Germany in 1984, with specialist diplomas in geo-statistics from the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and strategic mega trends from Asia Focus, Kellogg Singapore.

He speaks four languages including Portuguese, English, German and French. He worked for S.A. Mineracao da Trindade (SAMITRI) from 1984 until it was acquired by Vale in 1999, when he joined Vale as commercial director and general manager of the iron ore business in New York for Vale subsidiary Rio Doce America before moving to Rio Doce International, Belgium where he led Vale’s market and sales activities in Europe from 2000 to 2004. Between 2005 and 2007, he was president of Vale International S.A. in Switzerland, and from 2008 until the end of 2009 he was executive vice-president human resources at Vale (then Vale Inco) in Toronto.

In January 2010, Poppinga moved to Australia when he was named vice-president for base metals operations for the Asia and Pacific region where he was responsible for operations in Indonesia, New Caledonia, China and Japan.

Vale has mining operations on five continents in 38 countries. Its base metals business is headquartered in Toronto. Vale is the second largest mining company in the world by market capitalization.

Vale CEO Murilo Ferreira, who joins Newfoundland and Labrador Tory Premier Paul Davis, Minister of Natural Resources Derrick Dalle and Conservative Senator Norman Doyle in Long Harbour Nov. 19 to mark nickel production at the new processing plant, is a former CEO of Vale Canada. Ferreira served almost two years as the top Vale official in Canada, starting when the Brazilian mining giant finalized its purchase of Inco in January 2007. He had originally joined Vale in 1977. In 1998 he was appointed executive officer of commerce and finance at Vale do Rio Doce Alumínio S.A.-ALUVALE, a holding company of Vale that was merged into Vale in December 2003. Much of his experience is in aluminum and ferroalloys.

He was chief executive officer of Vale Inco, currently known as Vale Canada, in Toronto and executive director of nickel and base metals sales of Vale when he left the company for personal reasons at the end of 2008 and was replaced by Tito Martins. Ferreira rejoined Vale and replaced Roger Agnelli as CEO on May 22, 2011.

The event in Long Harbour Wednesday begins at 8 a.m. Central Standard Time at the processing plant in the product packaging area.

The Long Harbour Processing Plant  will employ about 475 people at full production. Long Harbour, a state-of-the-art hydrometallurgy, or “hydromet” for short, processing facility in southeast Newfoundland on Placentia Bay on the western Avalon Peninsula, about 100 kilometres from St. John’s, and Vale’s Voisey’s Bay mine  and concentrator in Labrador are an integrated operation. Nickel concentrate from Voisey’s Bay will be shipped to Long Harbour to be processed into finished nickel and associated copper and cobalt products.

Hydrometallurgy is a chemical process combining water, oxygen or other substances in a pressurized or other vessel to dissolve a metal from its ore, concentrate or an intermediate product (such as matte).

The nickel industry worldwide has traditionally smelted concentrates produced from nickel, copper and cobalt sulphide ores to make an intermediate sulphide product called matte.

Hydrometallurgy has been used for refining the matte to produce high purity nickel, copper and cobalt for the market. Thus, traditional production of these metals has occurred in two steps: smelting and refining. The new hydrometallurgical process that Vale developed and will use at Long Harbour process the nickel concentrate directly to metal products without first having to smelt the concentrate.

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Contrarians challenge received wisdom

Contrarians have the good sense not to buy into the herd mentality and happy talk politicians and their sycophants like to peddle about how good things are and how the future is bound to be even better than the past or present moment. Contrarians are the ones with the courage to say the emperor has no clothes. Or put another way, for those who enjoy anonymous but perhaps Sufi in origin wisdom: “A lie may take care of the present, but it has no future.”

In all likelihood, you may never have heard of Kyle Bass. He’s a Texas investor, which in itself is no big deal. What sets Bass apart, according to author Michael Lewis, is how he made millions of dollars through his Dallas hedge fund Hayman Capital, as one of only 15 people to bet against the U.S. sub-prime mortgage bond market in 2008 – before Bass turned to betting on the collapse of entire sovereign national economies in Europe, such as Greece. These days he’s talking about the European sovereign-debt crisis and his expectations regarding the economic future of Japan and Argentina.

While Bass could read a spreadsheet well enough to see what others didn’t and start betting against Europe in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession, he’s not much for foreign travel himself, preferring to shoot beavers on his Texas ranch from his army jeep with a sniper rifle. He also has a warehouse full of gold bars, along with some extra gold bullion in his desk drawer, as well as 20 million U.S. nickels he holds after buying them at face value for $1 million when the nickel inside each coin was worth 6.8 cents.

Michael Lewis is, of course, something of a contrarian himself. A prolific business writer whose work often appears in Vanity Fair magazine, he first came to public notice in 1989 when he left behind the life of a Salomon Brothers’ bond salesman on Wall Street after five years to write the semi-autobiographical Liar’s Poker: Rising through the Wreckage on Wall Street. Along with Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities novel published two years earlier, Liar’s Poker became the definitive take on Wall Street greed in the junk bond era of the 1980s.

If you want to understand how ordinary Greeks and successive national governments – in a twist on the usual story – wound up sinking the essentially honest Greek banks, or why fishermen in Iceland suddenly decided to become international investment bankers, or how the Irish thought they could get rich and stay rich by doing little more than building newer and bigger homes for each other, as the Irish banks aided and abetted nouveau property developers at every turn, you may want to read Lewis’s book, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, published in 2011.

Contrarians remind us that most of us don’t need much help in pulling the wool over our eyes. We’re more than willing – even eager ofttimes – to do it ourselves.