Brussels, 27/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has cleared the public bid by the Australian company BHP Billiton for all the shares in the Australian company WMC Resources. BHP is an Australian based international resource company with operations in aluminium, energy coal, coal used for the production of metals, copper, ferro-alloys, iron ore, titanium minerals, oil, gas, liquefied natural gas, nickel, diamonds, gold and silver. WMC is also an Australian based resources company which is active mainly in the mining and production of nickel, copper and uranium, plus other by-products resulting from its mining and refining activities such as gold, silver, cobalt and minerals. The Commission considered that the activities of the two parties overlapped in the product markets of refined nickel, refined copper, gold, silver and cobalt, but that the resulting market shares would not impede effective competition.