Big shot of the week
IVAN GLASENBERG, 61 CHIEF EXECUTIVE, GLENCORE
THE global business elite has its ruthless white sharks (Paul Singer), its peculiar meerkats ( Jeff Bezos) and its friendly sloths (Warren Buffett).
Ivan Glasenberg is its Jack Russell. A pugnacious, energetic little terrier constantly nipping at the ankles of his opponents.
He is head of Glencore, the world’s biggest commodity trading firm, which not only buys and sells the stuff which heats and feed the world, but produces and extracts it, too.
The coal in your fire, the lead on your roof, even the sugar in that cuppa you’re slurping has, at some point, almost certainly passed through his company’s hands.
Like most Jack Russells, Glasenberg isn’t interested in being loved, communicates in high-pitched yaps and doesn’t sit still for long.
Home is a modest chalet he shares with wife Elana in Switzerland’s wealthy Ruschlikon municipality, though he’s probably more familiar with the inside of his corporate jet than he is his own bathroom.
LIFE for this tireless rainmaker is an endless whistlestop tour between the tropics to examine his mines or sew up another deal.
In 2012 he pulled off one of the boldest deals in the City’s history when he merged Glencore with mining giant Xstrata (more of which in a tick), sealing his reputation as the world’s greatest trader.
Such plaudits mean a lot to Glasenberg. He’s a competitive little beastie. As a youth, he was a junior champ in race walking. Were it not for Apartheid- era South Africa’s exclusion from the 1984 Olympics, he’d almost certainly have been one of those guys ambulating round the track like they’ve got an urgent appointment with the Armitage Shanks.
Born one of four in a respectable Johannesburg suburb, his Lithuanian father was a luggage maker. Pre-Mandela South Africa was no place for a man of Ivan’s swirling ambitions. He relocated to California to take his MBA and in 1983 landed a job with New York-based trader Marc Rich, a notorious bounder who soon hopped it to Switzerland when the federal authorities discovered, inter alia, he was trading with the Ayatollah’s Iran.
Rich dispatched his new charge back to South Africa to work in the firm’s coal division. After a stint in Oz, Ivan was summoned to Zurich to become one of the ‘Rich Boys’ – a member of the company head’s inner sanctum.
By 1993, Rich’s world was coming apart. His mugshot was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list alongside Osama Bin Laden, and an attempt to corner the zinc market had gone south.
Glasenberg and his fellow Rich Boys convinced the boss to let them buy him out. The firm was renamed Glencore and by 2002 Glasenberg was chief executive.
Outside of trading circles, Glasenberg and Glencore were still unknowns, which suited him nicely. An intensely private creature, the only interview he had done was with his university magazine. He’s since asked them to remove it from their website. W
HEN he decided to take Glencore public in 2011, the blanket of anonymity evaporated. As the firm’s second-largest stakeholder, Glasenberg became an overnight billionaire. He and Glencore were suddenly big news.
Even more so a year later when he embarked upon the Xstrata deal. Here, Glasenberg showed just how ruthless he could be.
What began as a friendly merger of equals, which would see Xstrata’s Mick Davis become chief executive, evolved at the 11th hour into a full-blown Glencore takeover.
Glasenberg, who was supposed to become deputy, took charge, and Davis, an old school friend, was out on his ear.
Glasenberg fortune, which stands at £4bn, swelled again this week after receiving a £90m dividend.
He might not be on Greenpeace’s Christmas card list but his neighbours in Ruschlikon must love him. Thanks to his taxes, the municipality has been able to slash income revenue rates by 7pc.
Now 61, Glasenberg’s thirst for dealmaking shows no sign of abating. Last year I spotted him a party in Davos, his slight frame ducking among the elite, hellos conveyed with sharp nods of the head.
Before even a glass could be fetched, he was shuffling out the door and into the chill Alpine night, his plane’s engines doubtless already gearing up for another passage through the time zones.