teck resources said tuesday it has attracted interest from a number of possible suitors for the steelmaking coal business the canadian miner is looking to exit the company which has rejected a takeover approach from mining and commodities trader glencore and is working on fresh plans to separate its coal operations from its copperfocused mining arm said it has received a number of indications of interest in various forms of potential transactions involving the coal business tecks board and an independent special committee will continue to evaluate all valueaccretive proposals it said there is widespread recognition in the market today of the value of our highmargin longlife steelmaking coal assets which has in turn generated considerable interest from various parties teck chief executive jonathan price said he said the companys focus on a separation is to unlock the full potential of its growing copper operations business and to create value teck said it doesnt plan to provide an update until it determines that disclosure is required in late april teck dropped plans to separate coal from its base metals business hours before shareholders were due to vote on the proposal and said it would instead look at options for a simpler breakup it said that while shareholders it had heard from where in favor of a split many would prefer a more direct approach to a separation of the company the dropped plan would have created two standalone companies but with ties between them that would have ensured the coal operations helped fund copper projects that underpin the base metals company teck had already tweaked its plans in response to shareholders concerns about the length of time it would take to split the company with the coal business to be named elk valley resources ltd paying royalties to the basemetals unit to be named teck metals corp for at least three years rather than the original proposal of at least fiveandhalf years the company had the support for its proposed separation from its controlling shareholders chairman emeritus norman keevil and his family and japans sumitomo metal mining co which collectively account for 48 of the total voting power over teck via the companys a shares teck rejected a takeover bid from glencore which has said that it remains prepared to engage with tecks board but is also considering going directly to shareholders with its roughly 23 billion offer orest wowkodaw an analyst at scotia capital values the steelmaking coal business at 118 billion canadian dollars 878 billion or c106 billion after accounting for existing environmental liabilities pensions and lase liabilities in a research report tuesday wowkodaw said that while teck likely would want to sell the entire business at fair value a partial sale to a group of buyers possibly including steelmakers appears more likely