Mining is a dirty business, but worse for investors, it's seldom made them money-with one big dust-smudged exception named Wilbur Ross. The distressed-investing icon bought Ashland, Ky.-based Horizon Resources out of bankruptcy in 2004, renaming it International Coal Group and quickly beginning to add mining assets. In 2005, tunneling toward an IPO, ICG added heft with a deal to acquire Anker and CoalQuest, two mining concerns in which Ross already held large stakes, for $275 million. The newly combined company had a rough start: In 2006,12 miners died in an explosion at an ICG mine in West Virginia that was part of the Anker pickup. Then U.S. coal prices cratered some 70% in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis.
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