Finance
BHP to pay $72.5 million to settle Samarco class action over 2015 dam collapse
Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on September 9, 2025
1 min readLast updated: January 22, 2026
Global Banking and Finance Review
Company
Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on September 9, 2025
1 min readLast updated: January 22, 2026
BHP will pay $72.5 million to settle a class action over the 2015 Fundao dam collapse, which killed 19 people. The company expects insurance to cover most of the settlement.
(Reuters) - Global miner BHP Group said on Tuesday it would pay A$110 million ($72.52 million) to settle an Australian shareholder class action related to the deadly 2015 Fundao tailings dam collapse.
The class action was filed in the Federal Court of Australia in 2018 on behalf of the shareholders who had acquired BHP shares prior to the Fundao Dam failure.
The dam collapse at an iron ore mine owned by Samarco near the city of Mariana in southeastern Brazil had killed 19 people. The disaster also left hundreds of people homeless and flooded forests and polluted the Doce River.
Samarco is a joint venture between BHP's Brazilian unit and miner Vale.
In 2024, a Brazilian federal court ruled that Vale, BHP and Samarco were not criminally liable for the dam collapse.
BHP, the world's largest listed miner, said it expects to recover the majority of the settlement amount from its insurers.
($1 = 1.5168 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Rajasik Mukherjee; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)
A class action is a legal procedure that allows a group of people with similar claims to sue a defendant as a collective group, often used in cases involving large-scale harm.
Tailings dams are structures used to store byproducts of mining operations, which can pose environmental risks if they fail.
Financial liability refers to the legal responsibility of an individual or organization to settle debts or obligations, often resulting from legal actions.
Insurance recovery is the process of obtaining compensation from an insurance policy after a loss or damage has occurred.
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