South Africa’s overnight billionaire in the deal of a lifetime

South African-born billionaire Ivan Glasenberg finds himself in the middle of talks to create the world’s largest mining company out of a merger of Glencore and Rio Tinto. 

Glasenberg, the longtime CEO of Glencore who made it into the giant it is today, is still the company’s largest individual shareholder, owning over 10% of the company’s shares.

During his stint as CEO and now a major shareholder, Glasenberg has been trying to seal the deal between the two companies for over two decades. So far, it has proven elusive.  

This makes him a vital part of any deal between Rio Tinto and Glencore, which would be the largest-ever in the mining industry. 

Rio Tinto and Glencore admitted they have been in talks to merge since 8 January, making this the latest attempt to combine. The last attempt, just over a year ago, collapsed on disagreements regarding who would be CEO of the new entity. 

Glencore is led by Glasenberg’s protégé and fellow Wits-trained accountant, Gary Nagle, who has the nickname “Mini-Ivan” within the commodity-trading behemoth. 

Nagle has referred to the merger between Rio Tinto and Glencore as the most obvious deal in mining, with the potential to create a copper-producing giant. 

However, previous attempts, including those by Glasenberg, have fallen apart on disagreements over who would be the CEO and whether Glencore would have to dump its coal assets to make the deal work. 

This time around, the deal appears to be the most serious attempt at a merger, with new leadership at Rio Tinto potentially making an agreement simpler. 

The last deal that failed in 2024 collapsed over fears of a culture clash between Rio Tinto and Glencore, as well as the Australian giant’s unwillingness to pay a premium for the commodity trader. 

Glencore has long been seen as a different kind of mining company from traditional giants, such as Rio Tinto, BHP, and Anglo American. 

The Swiss-based company has a much larger trading business than traditional miners, while also owning its own mines. 

It has also had a historically very secretive culture, with its commodity-trading past mired in major scandals before it listed in London in 2011 under Glasenberg’s leadership. 

The company has been accused, at various times, of busting trade embargoes – including those on Apartheid South Africa – and profiting from corrupt regimes. 

Glencore also has a reputation for having an extremely hard-working environment, led by Glasenberg and Nagle, who often work 16-hour days. 

This time around, Rio Tinto’s new leadership appears more willing to compromise culturally and pay a premium for Glencore’s assets. Paying a premium may also give it a bigger say in who leads the new company. 

A potential driving factor behind this is Rio Tinto’s fears of being left behind, with its iron-ore-heavy portfolio outdated in a world where copper is the dominant industrial commodity. 

The likelihood of a deal being struck is also improved by investors’ willingness to own coal mining assets, of which Glencore has substantial amounts. 

Bloomberg reported that Rio Tinto has said it is willing to retain Glencore’s vast coal business as part of a deal. 

South Africa’s overnight billionaire

Glasenberg has spent much of his life building Glencore into the giant it is today, with the South African-born accounts cleaning up its image and listing the company publicly. 

While this required many 16-hour days at the office and dealmaking, it also made him handsomely wealthy by building up a significant shareholding in the company. 

Glencore, prior to listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2011, was a highly secretive company. It was a massive company, but no one knew precisely how much money it made or who its largest shareholders were. 

Employees were given white envelopes at annual events, which detailed the company’s performance over the past year and what their shareholding was worth. 

According to The World for Sale by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy, employees were also sworn to secrecy. If they spoke about the company’s finances openly, they would be asked to leave. 

Even in the company’s listing prospectus, Glencore refused to name its major shareholders, keeping the page blank. This was despite having one of the longest pre-listing documents ever, with 1,637 pages detailing the company’s global business and risks.

On 18 May 2011, Glasenberg went to bed as Glencore CEO, an influential and lucrative position. At the same time, it was not clear just how influential or lucrative it was. 

The next day, he woke up as one of the richest men in Europe, worth over £6 billion (R60 billion at the time). Glencore was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and Glasenberg owned over 10% of the company. 

Glencore’s listing on 19 May 2011 minted five new billionaires – the highest number for any initial public offering.

Glasenberg paid so much tax following Glencore’s listing to his canton in Switzerland, Rüschlikon, that the town cut its tax rate by 7% for all other residents. He is estimated to have paid £240 million in taxes in 2011. 

This was the culmination of a career spent trading coal in South Africa, Australia, and Hong Kong. Glasenberg, the ‘King of Coal’, pulled Glencore out of the shadow of its founder, Marc Rich, and turned it into a blue-chip stock. 

From the quiet Swiss town of Baar, Glencore has interests stretching from Canadian wheat to Peruvian copper and Russian oil. 

Today, Glencore is the largest metals trader, a top-three oil trader, and the world’s largest wheat trader.

Blas and Farchy say Glencore’s traders are the mirror image of Glasenberg – a South African accountant with a penchant for working extreme hours. 

The South African’s “insatiable appetite for work” transformed Glencore into the world’s largest metals trader, a top-three oil trader, and the world’s largest wheat trader.

Building Glencore and ‘Mini-Ivan’

Mining and commodity trading were not Glasenberg’s first love – that was reserved for racewalking. By his early 20s, he was South Africa’s national junior champion and almost went to the 1984 Olympics. 

South Africa’s exclusion from international sport meant Glasenberg had to focus on his studies, graduating from the University of Witwatersrand with a Bachelor of Accountancy in 1982. 

After earning his Chartered Accountant designation, Glasenberg entered the world of commodity trading as a marketer for Marc Rich & Co’s South African business. 

Marc Rich & Co, the forerunner of Glencore, was notorious for evading international sanctions, including those on South Africa. 

Glasenberg moved from the marketing division to the company’s coal trading department for South Africa and Australia. His work ethic pushed Glasenberg up the ranks of the company to become manager of the Hong Kong and Beijing offices only five years later. 

After becoming head of coal in 1991, Glasenberg would only need a couple of years to become the company’s CEO and was charged with cleaning up its image and bringing it into the 21st century. 

Instead of flying around in private jets organising deals and evading sanctions, Glasenberg pushed the company to set up in the Swiss town of Baar and trade commodities from behind computer screens. 

Glasenberg’s first few years as CEO were spent cleaning up the mess left by Marc Rich, who had made a number of scandalous deals. 

He also started to set the company up for future growth by investing heavily in rare earth metals, particularly cobalt, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

He leveraged his deep connections to make Glencore into a more traditional mining giant by owning and operating its own mines. 

Glasenberg drove the merger of Glencore and Xstrata to form a mining and trading powerhouse. This is still the largest mining merger ever, with the deal valued at $62 billion at the time. 

Glencore then went stratospheric. The company’s operations in 40 countries handled 3% of the world’s oil consumption and had more ships than the British Royal Navy. 

The company is now worth over £52 billion (R1.5 trillion) and is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

Glencore retains operations in South Africa through its various coal mines and ownership of Astron Energy, which operates an oil refinery in Cape Town with the capacity to process 100,000 barrels per day.

Glasenberg reinvented Glencore completely in his nearly two decades as CEO, bringing the company out of Marc Rich’s shadow and remodelling it in his own image. 

This was done by filling its ranks with South African accountants. Farchy and Blas say the country’s accent dominates the small Swiss town of Baar. 

Nagel, the so-called ‘Mini-Ivan’, is also a Wits-trained accountant and took over the position of Glencore CEO in 2021 when Glasenberg retired.

Glasenberg regularly visits his relatives in South Africa, where his brother, Martin, runs the family’s 65-year-old business – Elegant Travel Bags.