IVAN GLASENBERG

Glasenberg was born in Johannesburg and trained as a chartered accountant. He also competed at the international level in race walking, representing South Africa at the 1980 and 1984 World Race Walking Cup events.

In 1984 he joined Marc Rich and Co — the commodities trading firm founded by the fugitive trader Marc Rich — as a coal trader. He rose through the ranks over two decades, becoming CEO in 2002.

By then the company had been renamed Glencore. He took Glencore public in May 2011 in a £36 billion listing on the London Stock Exchange — the largest IPO in London's history at the time and the fifth largest globally.

He orchestrated Glencore's $29 billion acquisition of Xstrata in 2013, creating one of the world's largest diversified miners and commodity traders with operations spanning coal, copper, zinc, nickel, cobalt, and agricultural commodities. He stepped down as CEO in June 2021, handing the reins to Gary Nagle.

In 2022, Glencore paid $1.5 billion across the US, UK, and Brazil to settle bribery and market manipulation charges relating to conduct that occurred during his tenure.

Glencore (CEO 2002-2021, major shareholder with approximately 9% stake). Marc Rich and Co (predecessor to Glencore, joined 1984).

Glencore's portfolio includes mining assets in Australia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Colombia, and South America, plus commodity marketing operations spanning 90+ countries.

Glasenberg is an operator and commodity trader, not a stock picker. His version of investing is acquiring physical assets — mines, smelters, ports, and logistics networks — and combining them with Glencore's trading infrastructure to control both the commodity and the distribution.

He believes in owning the full supply chain from ground to customer. His deal thesis: buy distressed or unwanted assets in commodity downturns, build them into integrated production and marketing platforms, and monetize them when the cycle turns.

He was famously detail-oriented — reportedly able to walk into any Glencore operation and know the production numbers, cost structure, and margin better than the local managers.

The 2011 Glencore IPO. He converted a private partnership — where traders owned the equity and could not easily sell — into a publicly traded company, creating a liquidity event that made him and dozens of Glencore traders instant billionaires.

At IPO, his personal stake was worth approximately $10 billion. He had managed to take a secretive trading house and turn it into a legitimate global corporation without losing its trading culture or its edge.

The bribery scandal. Glencore's $1.5 billion settlement in 2022 — covering corrupt payments in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Brazil, Venezuela, the US, and other markets — was the culmination of years of doing business the way commodity traders had always done business in frontier markets.

Whether Glasenberg personally approved specific payments is disputed, but they occurred under his leadership for years. The settlement wiped more than $5 billion from Glencore's market value on announcement day.

Be the survivor. In cyclical industries, the winners are not those who make the most money at the top of the cycle — they are the ones still standing at the bottom.

Keep your cost of production below the marginal cost of the market, hold enough liquidity to weather three years of bad prices, and use the downturns to acquire assets from those who did not prepare. He famously refused to take a significant salary — his annual CEO pay was roughly $1.35 million — because he believed a CEO whose compensation depends on dividends thinks very differently from one whose pay depends on short-term stock performance.

Born January 7, 1957, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Holds South African, Australian, and Israeli citizenship.

He moved to Zug, Switzerland — where Glencore is headquartered — for most of his working career. Married with children.

His son David Glasenberg also works in the commodities and resources sector.

Graduated from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg with a Bachelor of Accountancy. Qualified as a Chartered Accountant in South Africa.

Completed an MBA at the University of Southern California (USC).

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