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Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of Glencore International (Sergei, Getty Images)
- After 36 years at Glencore, its CEO, Ivan Glasenberg, announced that he will be retiring next year.
- The son of a Joburg-born luggage importer, he helped build the world’s largest commodity trading company.
- But his career has been the subject of some controversy.
- For more articles, go to wwwBusinessInsider.co.za.
On Friday, South Africa-born Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg announced that he will be retiring in the first half of 2021.
The 63-year-old is the CEO of the world’s largest commodity trading company. Glencore buys and sells coal and other commodities, and it also owns several mines. It is one of the main exporters of coal in South Africa.
He was with the company for 36 years. He will be succeeded by Gary Nagle, who currently heads the company’s coal division. Nagle is South African and, according to The Sydney Morning Herald, known as a “mini Ivan” like Glasenberg, he also studied accounting at the University of the Witwatersrand, for example.
Nagle will have a lot of work ahead of him: Regulators are investigating Glencore for alleged corruption and bribery. The company, which is one of the world’s biggest polluters, has also committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.
Glasenberg has earned a reputation for being an aggressive workaholic who lives to do business.
According to Forbes, Glasenberg is number 804 on the worldwide list of billionaires. It is currently worth $ 4.6 billion (R70 billion), compared to Johann Rupert de Richemont ($ 6.5 billion), Nicky Oppenheimer ($ 7.8 billion) and Patrice Motsepe ($ 2.6 billion).
His career has been tumultuous, here’s how it unfolded:
It wasn’t a teacher’s pet
One of four children, he grew up in Illovo in Johannesburg. His Lithuanian father was a luggage manufacturer and importer, Mail & Guardian reported. His mother was South African and grew up in Springs. He enrolled at Hyde Park High School in 1974. His geography teacher Kathy Caselli-Thomson told the Sunday Times that her student “was not a terribly shy person and didn’t always accept that the teacher was right.”
He made an important connection in Wits, who ended up with a knife in his back.
Glasenberg studied accounting at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Here he became friends with Mick Davis, who was a teacher at the time.
Davis would eventually become CEO of the Xstrata resource group. In 2012, Davis and Glasenberg announced that they would merge their companies and Davis was promised the position of CEO of the new entity.
But as the merger unfolded, a ruthless Glasenberg pushed Davis aside and took over as CEO. Davis left the company.
He became interested in trading raw materials because of candle wax.
After Wits, he did his articles at Joburg Nexia Levitt Kirson’s firm. During this time, he became interested in commodity trading.
“I observed a man who bought candle wax in South America and sold it to Japan,” he said in an article. “I thought, ‘That’s amazing. Talking on the phone in his office, that man made money moving candle wax from one country to another. ‘ It really interested me. “
His first boss was on the FBI’s most wanted list
In 1983, after earning an MBA from the University of Southern California, he began working for commodities trader Marc Rich in New York. Glasenberg quickly rose through the ranks. Rich sent him back to South Africa to work on coal deals.
In the 1990s, it became known that Rich was trading illegally with Iran: he appeared on the FBI’s most wanted list alongside Osama bin Laden. Rich, who also evaded taxes, was later pardoned by then-President Bill Clinton.
Glasenberg became CEO in 2002 and, with his colleagues, bought Rich’s stake in the company. They established a renowned company called Glencore.
Almost competed in the 1984 Olympics
Glasenberg is passionate about racing and wanted to participate in the 1984 Olympics under the Israeli flag. In the end, he didn’t, either because of his South African nationality, according to some reports, or because his time wasn’t good enough.
He lowered his neighborhood taxes
Glasenberg married Elana Orelowitz, who came from Germiston. They have two kids. The couple live in a chalet in the wealthy municipality of Ruschlikon in Switzerland. Glencore’s head office is nearby.
After Glencore was listed in 2011, Glasenberg made a huge windfall. A portion of their income tax went to their neighborhood, and the amount was so large that they could lower their municipal taxes by 7%.
But not all residents were happy, some objected, given their company’s involvement in the African mines.
He is a close associate of President Cyril Ramaphosa
Bloomberg reports that they have known each other for about 30 years. In 2005, Glencore chose Ramaphosa to be its black economic empowerment partner in the Shanduka Coal project. They also invested together in the Optimum coal mine.
Glencore was pressured to sell the Optimum coal mine to a company associated with the Guptas. Glencore also recently obtained approval to purchase Chevron’s oil refining and fueling stations in South Africa for $ 1 billion (approximately R14 billion).
Glasenberg previously said that Ramaphosa would be “a very good president.”
Like Ramaphosa, he’s a member of the 5 a.m. club
Start your day at 5 a.m. by running, cycling or swimming before arriving at the office at 7 a.m., according to the Daily Mail.
Read: Cyril Ramaphosa wakes up before 5am and experts think you should too
He paid former British Prime Minister Tony Blair more than 14 million rand for a couple of hours of work.
Glasenberg called on Blair, a friend, to act as a mediator during a day when Glencore and Xstrata negotiated their merger. Blair received $ 1 million for a couple of hours, the Daily Mail reported.
Your company almost went bankrupt
In 2015, the Chinese economy cooled down and commodity prices were on the verge of collapsing. Traders made massive bets against Glencore, which lost a large part of its value. The company had to raise emergency cash to stay afloat. Since then, the company has taken drastic steps to recover, selling many of its assets and cutting costs.
Glasenberg’s business in Africa has raised suspicions
Glencore’s association with controversial Israeli commodity magnate Dan Gertler, who is involved in mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has come under scrutiny in the United States. Gertler is on the US sanctions list for his alleged “opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals.” Glencore reportedly made payments to Gertler, which are now under investigation in the United States.
The US government has also been investigating Glencore’s business for possible violations in Venezuela and Nigeria since 2007.
Last year, the UK government also launched an investigation into Glencore for “suspected bribery” in December 2019, while the Swiss Attorney General also brought a long list of bribery and corruption charges against Glencore for what it did in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
It’s intensely private
Glasenberg has only given one media interview: with the University of Southern California magazine. And then he asked them to remove it from his website, The Guardian reported.
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