By Sonali Paul MELBOURNE (Reuters) - BHP Billiton is set to unwind what's left of its 2001 merger with South Africa's Billiton on Tuesday, bundling the remaining assets into a new company to be handed to shareholders so it can focus on its core businesses. The 2001 mega-merger united BHP's copper, coal, iron ore and petroleum businesses with London-listed Billiton's aluminium, energy coal, manganese, nickel and titanium operations, in a bid to gain scale and win over international investors. "In hindsight, those (Billiton) assets just didn't have either the scale to be more important in the portfolio, or in those particular industries - the commodity prices were under pressure." BHP Billiton is expected to report a 22 percent rise in annual attributable profit to $14.1 billion on Tuesday, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine's SmartEstimate, with investors hoping also for a share buyback. Following two years of austerity as commodity prices cooled, BHP could be in a position to return more than $8 billion to shareholders over the next two years, UBS estimated.
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