Swiss company Glencore. Trading company Glencore. Dossier. Long-term contract with Rosneft

In the early 1990s, it was the main seller of Russian metals and oil. Why did she lose ground?

Valery Igumenov

This is the largest non-public company on the planet: its turnover in 2006 was $116.5 billion, one and a half times more than that of Gazprom. Her business fits into one simple scheme: she buys raw materials from mining companies and sells them to processors. Details? It’s not so easy to get them: eight out of ten former and current employees of the company (and we interviewed about three dozen) refused to answer our questions. Those who agreed usually spoke anonymously. “The ideology is: the muddier the water, the bigger the fish we will catch. As soon as the water becomes clear, there is nothing we can do,” explains one of them. For decades, this company was not afraid to work in the most backward countries and easily found a common language with dictators rejected by the world. In the early 1990s, during the collapse of the Russian economy, it was the main exporter of Russian aluminum, earning hundreds of percent of profits.

Meet Glencore International, formerly Marc Rich + Co. Having changed owners, broken teeth with young Russian oligarchs and largely lost its influence in Russia, the company has found a way to remain in our market: it participates in the business of large oil and aluminum companies. But how durable is the status quo?

Glencore (an acronym for Global Energy Commodities and Resources) is headquartered in Baar, a town in the tiny Swiss canton of Zug (the entire canton is one-fourth the size of Moscow), formerly one of the poorest in the confederation. It was poverty that forced the cantonal authorities in the 1960s to achieve the right to adopt extremely liberal tax legislation, favorable for international holdings operating outside Switzerland: they do not pay income tax in the canton (they still have to pay federal tax). The EU authorities are still indignant about the “offshore zone” in Zug, but companies registered there enjoy the benefits of both tax-free jurisdiction and the status of a reputable Swiss company, and not a “laundromat” from the Cayman Islands.

It was in Zug that 39-year-old businessman Marc Rich, together with his partner Pincus Green, created the company Marc Rich + Co AG in April 1974. Former employees of the American trading giant Philipp Brothers decided to go free.

The first decades of Marc Rich + Co-plot for an adventure novel (see also “Young Years”). The company traded Iranian oil in circumvention of the American embargo, purchased nickel and gold from Castro’s Cuba, traded with disgraced Libya and with South Africa when it found itself under international sanctions due to apartheid. During the 1973 oil crisis, the partners made millions by running oil through dozens of offshore companies they created. In 1983, federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani (the future mayor of New York) authorized the arrest of Rich and Green, and the indictment included 65 counts, including tax evasion of $48 million. The partners fled the United States, Rich took Spanish citizenship, Green took Bolivian citizenship.

Marc Rich turned out to be the only company that decided to supply grain to the USSR, despite the international ban due to the war in Afghanistan. By the time the economic system of the Soviet Union began to collapse, Mark Rich was already a long-time and trusted friend of Soviet party officials and leaders of foreign trade associations. Therefore, in the early 1990s, when the water in Russia became quite turbid, Marc Rich easily began to catch very large fish in it.

“Our people didn’t yet understand market trade, the factories didn’t have money, they asked the banks, but the banks wouldn’t take aluminum as collateral. Rich Mage came with money and took aluminum,” businessman Igor Vishnevsky recalls in an interview with Forbes, in early 1990 -x head of the aluminum department, and from 1998 to 2003 - the entire Moscow representative office of Glencore International.The domestic price of aluminum was 5-10% of its market price in the West, and a significant part of the difference ended up in the accounts of the Swiss company.Marc Rich's profit margin on operations with Russian raw materials in the early 1990s, no one dares to name, they only say that it was measured in hundreds of percent.As soon as in 1992, by decree of President Boris Yeltsin, tolling was allowed - the processing by Russian enterprises of foreign customer-supplied raw materials for an agreed fee, Marc Rich adopted this tool for extracting excess profits. A high-ranking manager of one of the Russian raw materials companies, who 15 years ago worked for the Swiss, tells about the practice, common for that time: “They imported alumina, tax-free, paid only VAT on the cost of processing, which can always be was underestimated by agreement with the factory. And the officials simply paid rent and transported almost all the aluminum for export.” In the early 1990s, thanks to Russian tolling, a third of all aluminum on the world exchange market, according to the Washington Post, was supplied by Marc Rich + Co.

Although Marc Rich traded a full range of commodities and commodities, its greatest interest has always been oil. Marc Rich had almost no oil contracts with the USSR, and it was more difficult to get into the oil export system than into aluminum processing: it was monopolized by the foreign trade association Soyuznefteexport, created back in the 1920s. To obtain oil, Maga Rich had to create production joint ventures, supplying equipment and modernizing several oil refineries in Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan. The difference between the internal and external prices of petroleum products more than covered the costs.

The matter, however, was not limited to investments. The technology for concluding lucrative oil contracts was tested by partners back in 1973, when, according to BusinessWeek magazine, they bought a luxurious mansion in the south of France and settled expensive Parisian prostitutes there. Negotiations were held here with Arab sheikhs. The “Method for Sheikhs” was successfully tested on the “first Soviet millionaire” Artem Tarasov. In his memoirs, “Millionaire,” he describes how in the late 1980s a suite in a luxury London hotel was rented especially for him, a yacht with an orchestra was rented, how Marc Rich’s people took him to nightclubs, offering to take any dancer into the room - the company pays for all. Tarasov not only signed a contract beneficial for the Swiss company, but also brought it to the then Minister of Grain Industry of the USSR, and soon Marc Rich began bartering Argentine grain for Russian oil products.

The company's Moscow office gradually began to develop: in 1992, about 20 people worked there, and after a year and a half - more than a hundred. “Mostly MGIMO graduates and former foreign traders with their own contracts came,” recalls Mechel General Director Alexey Ivanushkin, who rose to head the ferroalloys department at Marc Rich’s Moscow office. The company willingly hired people with hardware experience: the father of the same Ivanushkin, Gennady, a former consul in Geneva and a retired KGB general, headed the Russian security service of the Swiss company.

From 1989 to 1993, Marc Rich was one of the largest buyers of Russian oil, aluminum, copper, zinc, lead, coal, and a supplier of grain and sugar to the country. The company's annual trade turnover with the countries of the former USSR was, according to various sources, $3-4 billion. For comparison: all Russian exports in 1993 amounted to $43 billion. But in the same year, 1993, the company's position began to shake.

How is Glencore (formerly Marc Rich) structured from the inside? The company's founders distributed management between three offices - in Baar (metals transactions and finance), London (oil, petroleum products and sugar) and Rotterdam (grain). But it is not the offices that buy and sell raw materials, earning money for the company, but relatively independent employee traders. Each of them is an independent “combat unit”; he has the right to sign and, within specified limits, manages the company’s funds. As a rule, a trader works with one type of product in one region. In total, it is estimated that the company employs about 300 traders. They do not receive salaries, but bonuses depending on the volume of transactions they carry out. According to one of the company's current employees, who spoke with Forbes on condition of anonymity, the lower limit of a trader's annual income exceeds $1 million. All traders in one direction report to the main trader, working in one of the head offices. There are now about 20-30 main traders in the company, and they all have a stake in the capital. “The policy is this: if you work in a top position, you get a share, if you leave, sell your share to other top people,” says an employee of the company’s Moscow office.

Traders are the backbone of companies around the world. In 1998-2003, the Moscow office was headed by the “aluminum” trader Igor Vishnevsky, who reported to the executive director and also a specialist in aluminum transactions, Willi Strothotte in Baar. Now the formal head of the Moscow headquarters is lawyer Yana Tikhonova, while neither traders nor financiers are subordinate to her. According to Forbes sources, the office is actually run by oil trader Vladimir Shcherbak, who in turn reports to the head of Glencore's London oil office, Alex Bird.

Marc Rich managed the empire he created until 1993. By that time, the 60-year-old founder of the company was no longer as energetic as 20 years ago, he was painfully going through a divorce from his wife Denise, to whom he paid, according to some sources, $200 million in compensation, and, as the company says, he had lost his former grip. In addition, the very fact that the company was run by a fugitive from American justice blocked the company's access to the most lucrative American consumers of raw materials. It ended in a “velvet revolution”: a group of top traders led by aluminum specialist Willy Strothotte and oilmen Dany Dreyfus and Ari Silverberg convinced Rich to resign.

Rich sold his stake to the company's management (which, according to various estimates, ranged from 75% to 80%). The calculation of the “revolutionaries” turned out to be correct: soon after the resignation of the founder, the company was able to open a fourth head office in the USA, in Stamford (Connecticut). Rich's entire package was divided among leading traders. Now “no one owned either a controlling or simply a dominant stake,” says Vishnevsky. “First among equals” was the new CEO Willi Strothotte. In 1994 the company was renamed Glencore International AG.

Marc Rich himself took up investing, opening a new company with the old name, Marc Rich Investments. And in 2001, US President Bill Clinton, a few hours before leaving the White House, pardoned Rich and Green (among 176 people). Clinton later justified himself by saying that the fugitive partners agreed to contribute $200 million to the treasury and such prominent Israeli politicians as the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and the former head of the Mossad intelligence service Shabtai Shavit asked for them. The American press also wrote about the $450,000 that Rich's ex-wife Denise had previously donated to Clinton's presidential library (Denise was later a donor to Hillary Clinton's election campaign). The pardon caused a serious scandal, so Rich and Green chose not to return to the United States, remaining in Europe.

While traders were sharing power, privatization was just unfolding in Russia, and the first financial and industrial groups were formed. Enterprises had owners who began to take over all foreign trade operations for themselves, not wanting to farm them out to third-party traders. “At some point our business simply disappeared,” recalls Alexey Ivanushkin.

“In 1993, we decided to create an enterprise and visited all the largest companies,” recalled the former head of the board of directors of the Bratsk Aluminum Plant in an interview with the Vedomosti newspaper.

Yuri Shleifshtein. “At Marc Rich they told us: you have only one opportunity - to trade through us, because we control this market.” But Shleifstein found another opportunity - he agreed with the brothers David and Simon Ruben, owners of a much smaller rival company, Trans World Metals. The Rubens took over Russian entrepreneurs brothers Lev and Mikhail Chernykh, who helped them seize control of the exports of Russia's second largest aluminum producer, KrAZ, and then the Sayan and Novokuznetsk aluminum smelters. By the mid-1990s, Glencore had become only the second aluminum exporter from Russia, losing leadership to the Rubens and Chernys. In 1996, the peak year for aluminum exports from Russia, Glencore exported 750,000 tons of metal, and Trans World exported more than a million, Vishnevsky recalls.

The new management of Glencore in 1995-1996 radically changed the company's strategy: if previously it was an almost pure trader who acquired industrial assets mainly to gain access to manufactured products, now the company begins to participate in the management of enterprises. In Russia, Glencore is buying up large stakes in metallurgical plants: the Chelyabinsk Iron and Steel Works, the Sredneuralsk Copper Smelter, and Dalpolimetal. The company is trying to compensate for the lost time with significant investments in production, but the idea is not successful.

And in 1998, the Russian division of Glencore completely stopped working for the future. After the collapse of financial markets in August, the head office gave the order to sell off Russian assets and focus on collecting debts from suppliers. Not everything was returned: for example, $25 million allocated for the purchase of oil from RAO MES, which became notorious in connection with the reconstruction of the Kremlin and trade with Iraq, disappeared forever. “Not a ton of oil was delivered, all the money was stolen,” complains one former Glencore oil trader. By the early 2000s, Glencore sold all its industrial assets to Russian companies. The company was much better at developing production outside Russia: the Swiss raw materials company Xstrata, which Glencore managers began managing in 1996, in 10 years has become one of the largest mining groups in the world, operating in Australia, Chile, South Africa and a dozen other countries, and became the world's largest exporter of thermal coals, a major producer of copper, nickel, ferrochrome and zinc.

In 2000, Glencore had a chance to regain its role as the largest exporter of Russian aluminum: its worst competitor, the Trans World group, had by this time been expelled from Russia. Its factories were bought by Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich. Together with Oleg Deripaska they created Russian Aluminum. The newborn aluminum company had practically no sales network of its own abroad, so about 80% of exports had to be carried out through Western traders. “At first it was difficult for them, and in the first two years after the formation of Rusal, Glencore sold quite a large amount of their aluminum,” says Vishnevsky and immediately makes a reservation: “The margin, however, was completely different.”

Rusal CEO Alexander Bulygin, in his first interview after his appointment, announced his intention to reduce dependence on traders and fulfilled his promise: last year their share in the company’s sales fell to 15%. But Glencore did not miss its chance: this year, together with SUAL and Rusal, it became one of the co-owners of the united company Russian Aluminum (in exchange for its alumina refineries in Ireland, Italy and Jamaica, as well as an aluminum smelter in Sweden ). Now, with a high probability, it can lay claim to the sale of the mentioned 15% of aluminum produced, which is 600,000 tons of metal per year for approximately $1.7 billion. But, according to sources in the Moscow representative office of the company, Glencore will earn only intermediary interest on this aluminum.

In 2002, Glencore underwent a new and almost imperceptible change of power from the outside: another chief trader, this time coal, Ivan Glasenberg, became the company's executive director. The principle “the one who leaves sells everything” is unshakable, so Willy Strothogte takes the place of chairman of the board of directors - “reigns, but does not rule”, waiting for his colleagues to collect enough money to pay him. The place of head of the London office, traditionally the second person in the company, has recently been taken by oil trader Alex Bird, who for many years oversaw the oil business in Russia. Perhaps it was Bird who convinced Glencore management to decide to participate in the business of a large Russian oil company. Until recently, Glencore only had a stake in the small Nobel Oil, which produces oil in the north of the Komi Republic: the Swiss company was afraid to invade this branch of the Russian economy, which is dangerous for foreign investors. But in 2003, Glencore allocated, according to estimates, at least $300 million to the owner of the Russneft oil company, Mikhail Gutseriev, for the purchase of new fields, receiving in return from 40% to 49% in three producing subsidiaries of the oil company: Varieganneft, Ulyanovskneft " and "Nafta-Ulyanovsk".

For what? The company needed new oil, says one of Forbes' interlocutors at Glencore's Moscow office. The company has lost supplies from YUKOS, the “near-state” oil workers prefer to deal with the trading company Gunvor of Gennady Timchenko, an old acquaintance of President Putin... According to the manager of the Moscow office of Glencore, the Swiss company does not interfere in the management of Russneft, does not claim dividends, and is content with only the fact that all of the company’s exported oil goes through Glencore (“Russneft” has been exporting about 66% of its oil production in recent years, worth about $2.5 billion per year).

The investments turned out to be really risky: in November 2006, the Prosecutor General's Office opened criminal cases on the fact of illegal entrepreneurship against several subsidiaries of NK Russneft, accusing them of non-payment of taxes, and in January 2007 a criminal case appeared on the fact of non-payment of taxes by Russneft itself " When this issue of Forbes was being prepared for publication, law enforcement agencies brought charges of tax evasion and illegal entrepreneurship against Gutseriev. “Gutseriev promised to solve everything,” admitted an employee of Glencore’s Moscow office even before the latest events, “but there are rumors that everything could be sold to some state-owned company.”

It appears that Glencore's role in Russian oil exports is of serious concern to the company's management. The Swiss office of the company, in full accordance with the traditions of corporate secrecy, ignored most of Forbes’ questions, and answered the question about oil. “In 2006, Glencore transported about 34 million tons of oil and petroleum products from Russia,” said company spokeswoman Lottie Grenacher. In addition to Russneft, Glencore trades oil from Tatneft, Bashneft, TNK-BP, “as well as a number of small companies,” she added.

Times have changed. Now, in order to obtain raw materials for export, you need to negotiate not with plant directors. With all its gigantic resources and capabilities, Glencore cannot compare with the country's current main oil trader - Gunvor, a company controlled by President Putin's former colleague Gennady Timchenko, which sells an estimated 70 million to 80 million tons of Russian oil per year for $32-37 billion. (for reference: all Russian exports in 2006 were 248 million tons). “Glencore are foreigners, and from a certain point this ruined their lives,” says the manager of one of the competing companies. “They have access to Polyanka (the street in Moscow where the main office of Transneft is located. - Forbes), but higher- No".

Now Glencore is not a monopoly or even the largest trader of Russian raw materials, as in the early 1990s. For her, this may be a loss, but any other trader would probably be happy to take the place in the Russian commodity market that the “loser” Glencore occupies.

Youth

Mark David Rich (real name Reich) was born in 1934 in Antwerp (Belgium) in the family of a Jewish scrap metal dealer. In 1941, the Reich family, fleeing the Nazis, left first for France, then, in 1942, for the USA, changing their surname to a more “American” one - Rich. In 1952, Mark graduated from the prestigious Rhodes School in Manhattan and entered New York University, however, after studying there for only one semester, he dropped out and got a job at Philipp Brothers, the largest raw materials trading company in the world at that time. Mark’s father, who had business relations with this company even before the war, insisted on this. Starting from a low-level position in the metals department, Rich quickly became an independent trader. His first deal was the conclusion in 1958 of a lucrative contract for the purchase of Cuban mercury. Soon after this, Rich headed the Bolivian representative office of Philipp Brothers. In 1967, Rich is transferred to Madrid, where he first meets another company trader, Pincus (Pinky) Green. They start working together.

The most resounding success of Rich and Green was the conclusion of direct contracts for the purchase of oil from Arab producers, bypassing the “Seven Sisters”, the largest international oil companies, that dominated the market at that time. It was oil that became the reason for their break with Philipp Brothers: in the spring of 1973, Rich and Green learned from their sources in Arab countries about OPEC's intention to sharply increase oil prices, the company buys it at a price slightly above the market price and, after the increase, earns a lot of money. So huge that the company's management refuses to pay Rich and Green their percentage. They leave Philipp Brothers and in the spring of 1974, having lured several traders with them, they organized the company Marc Rich + Co AG in Zug and began an all-out war with Philipp Brothers, attracting former clients. They would ultimately win this war: in the early 1980s, Philipp Brothers merged with Salomon Brothers and ceased to exist as an independent trading company (now one of the divisions of Citigroup).

Affiliated companies Glencore (Canada)[d]

Story

The company, called Marc Rich + Co, was founded in the town of Baar in the Swiss canton of Zug in April 1974 by American entrepreneur Marc Rich and Pincus Green.

Marc Rich remained the only company supplying grain to the USSR, despite the international ban due to the war in Afghanistan.

From 1989 to 1993 Marc Rich was one of the largest buyers of Russian oil, aluminum, copper, zinc, lead, coal, counter-supplying grain and sugar. Its annual trade turnover with the countries of the former USSR was, according to various sources, 3-4 billion US dollars. For comparison: all Russian exports in 1993 amounted to 43 billion.

Marc Rich ran the company until 1993. The fact that the company was run by a fugitive from American justice blocked its access to American consumers of raw materials. As a result, a group of top traders led by aluminum specialists Willy Strothotte and petrochemical specialists Dany Dreyfus and Ari Silverberg convinced Rich to resign. In 1993-1994, the remaining managers of the company bought out Rich’s stake (according to various estimates, from 75 to 80%). The reason for Rich's departure was new charges of illegal oil trade with Iran (according to another version, with Iraq) and tax evasion.

Soon after the founder's resignation, the company was able to open its fourth head office - in the USA, in Stamford (Connecticut). Rich's stake was divided among leading traders.

Willi Strothotte became the new executive director. In 1994 the company was renamed Glencore International AG .

In December 2016, the company became part of the owners of the Russian company Rosneft as part of the privatization of a 19.5% stake owned by Russia. Glencore is on par with Qatar Sovereign Fund each have 50% of the privatization stake in 19.5% of Rosneft. The transaction amount was 10.2 billion euros. Reuters called the deal "the largest transfer of state property into private hands since the early post-Soviet years."

Internal structure of the company

The founders of the company distributed management between three offices - in the Swiss city of Baar, transactions with metals are carried out and financial issues are resolved, transactions with oil, petroleum products and sugar are carried out in the London office, and the grain department of Glencore Grain Rotterdam is located in the Rotterdam office. But it is not the offices that buy and sell goods, earning money for the company, but relatively independent employees-traders. Each of them is an independent “combat unit”; he has the right to sign and, within specified limits, manages the company’s funds. Most often, a trader works with one type of product in one region. In total, it is estimated that the company employs about 300 traders. Their personal income does not consist of salaries, but of bonuses, depending on the volume of transactions they carry out; at the same time, the lower limit of a trader’s annual income exceeds $1 million. All traders in one direction are accountable to the main trader working in one of the head offices. There are now between 20 and 30 main traders in the company, and they all have a stake in the capital. “The policy is this: if you work in a top position, you get a share, if you leave, sell your share to other tops.”

Owners and management

Shareholders - company management (about 500 partners). Glencore's 65 employees own 58% of the company, or about $35 billion, based on a capitalization of about $60 billion. Largest shareholders:

In addition, Glencore's CFO Stephen Kalmin(Steven Kalmin) owns 1% of the company, or 70.7 million shares, which are worth about $600 million

At the beginning of February 2012, it became known that the owners of Glencore agreed to merge with the Swiss mining company Xstrata through an exchange of shares (at that time Glencore already owned 34% of Xstrata shares). The deal was expected to create the world's largest exporter of coal for power plants and a leading copper producer. The merger resulted in a $90 billion company called Glencore Xstrata International.

Company activities and assets

Representing mining companies and companies around the world, Glencore supplies metals, minerals, crude oil, refined petroleum products, coal, and agricultural products to customers in the automotive, metals, food processing and energy industries. The company owns 10.3% of the metallurgical company Russian Aluminum, shares in subsidiaries of the Russian oil company RussNeft, and a number of mining assets (zinc deposits in Peru and Kazakhstan, coal deposits in South Africa, copper deposits in the Philippines).

So in March 2007, Glencore's aluminum assets (12% of the company's total ownership) were combined with the assets of the Russian aluminum companies Russian Aluminum and SUAL into the world's largest aluminum company Russian Aluminum (United Company Rusal). The combined company became the largest aluminum and alumina producer in the world. Annual production is expected to be about 4 million tons of aluminum and 11 million tons of alumina. According to Rusal (2011), Glencore owns 8.75% of its shares through Amokenga Holdings, a subsidiary of Glencore.

In 1996, Glencore bought a stake in the Swiss raw materials company Xstrata, which was taken over by Glencore managers. Over the course of 10 years, Xstrata has become one of the largest mining groups in the world, operating in Australia, Chile, South Africa and a dozen other countries, and has become the largest in the world. exporter of thermal coals, major producer of copper, nickel, ferrochrome and zinc.

The company's stake in the Swiss mining company Xstrata is 35%, valued at about $23 billion at the company's February 2011 stock price. In addition to the shares of Xstrata and UC Rusal, Glencore also owns 51% of Kazzinc.

The lion's share of Glencore's revenue - 92%, which is $133.9 billion, is generated through trading. The share of production in the company's EBITDA is 32% ($1.9 billion).

The structure of the company

The company has three main business areas: Metals and minerals, Energy products, Agricultural products:

Each of these areas is in turn divided into the following departments:

Metals and minerals: about 30% of revenue or $45.2 billion.

Aluminum. Bauxite - Principals Steven Blumgart and Gary Fegel.
Ferroalloys. Nickel is led by Christian Wolfensberger and Stuart Cutler.
Zinc. Copper. Lead

Energy products: 61.6% of revenue, amounting to $89.3 billion.

Oil - Director Alex Bird
Coal

Agricultural products: 7.1% of revenue, which is $10.4 billion.

not divided into departments. In this business area the company deals with wheat, corn, barley, rice, vegetable oil, flour, sugar and biodiesel - head Chris Mahoney.

Glencore's main agricultural production assets are concentrated in the CIS, Australia, Paraguay and Argentina, where the company produced 699,604 tons (+ 6.4%) of grains, corn and oilseeds in 2010.

Performance indicators

Glencore in 2010 increased net profit by 39%, to $3.799 billion. Revenue for the year increased by 36%, to $144.978 billion. EBITDA - by 58%, to $6.201 billion. EBIT increased by 60%, to $5.29 billion.

The company itself officially discloses only consolidated revenue ($152.2 billion in 2008), assets ($61.3 billion) and shareholder funds ($15.4 billion), in 2008 net profit fell by 8.4% to $4.75 billion . .

IPO company

In April 2011, Glencore chief executive Ivan Glasenberg announced plans for an initial public offering of the company's shares on the London and Hong Kong stock exchanges. As a result of this issue, the company expected to earn about $12.1 billion, as a result of which the total enterprise value should have reached approximately $60 billion. The media described this placement as the largest IPO in the world in 2011.

The order book was fully subscribed on the first day due to strong demand from investors. Investors submitted applications for the entire volume of the placement, including the option for the organizing banks.

The shares between the two stock exchanges were distributed in a ratio of 80/20: Glencore intends to place shares worth about $8.8 billion on the London exchange, and a package worth up to 2.2 billion is intended for the Hong Kong stock exchange. After the completion of the IPO, free circulation on the British and Hong Kong 15-20% of Glencore International AG shares are located on stock exchanges.

Tony Hayward ( Tony Hayward) is a senior independent director at Glencore.
Simon Murray ( Simon Murray) - non-executive chairman of the board of directors.

With a share price of 530 pence, Glencore's capitalization was 37.1 billion pounds ($59.9 billion). The total amount of funds raised reached about $10 billion.

As a result of the initial public offering, Glencore ranked 7th among global mining companies in terms of capitalization.

Notes

Glencore International on the Forbes Global 2000 List
Who we are (undefined) (unavailable link). Glencore. Retrieved March 15, 2015. Archived March 15, 2015.
https://www.hkex.com.hk/eng/invest/company/profile_page_e.asp?WidCoID=0805&WidCoAbbName=&Month=&langcode=e
Glencore International. Profession: mediator. forbes.ru.
Six Swiss companies feature among the biggest companies in Europe according to a survey Swissinfo, October 18, 2006 (English)
, With. 214.
“We make our own luck,” - Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of Glencore (unavailable link)
Fedorinova Yu., Khripunov K. Glencore emerges from the shadows (unavailable link). // Vedomosti. - No. 112 (2382). - June 22, 2009.

RBC, the financing scheme for the deal turned out to be very strange.

“If the partners invest only €300 million of their own funds, then the borrowed financing for the purchase of the Rosneft stake will amount to almost €10 billion. In this case, the leverage in the transaction will be 17.5 to 1,” writes Pirrong and wonders: “Which bank will take take such a risk?

“In the near future there will be full disclosure [of information] on the transaction. There will be exact figures, including an assessment of investors’ own funds,” a source close to one of the parties to the deal told RBC.
If little is known about the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar (QIA), Glencore has quite a wealth of experience in interacting with Russian oligarchs.
"Let's start with interaction with the USSR (from Wikipedia)

“The company, called Marc Rich + Co, was founded in the town of Baar in the Swiss canton of Zug in April 1974 by American entrepreneur Marc Rich and Pincus Green.

The company was initially built on the principles of secrecy, high-risk and aggressive policies. The company traded Iranian oil in circumvention of the American embargo, purchased nickel and gold from Cuba, and traded with disgraced Libya and with South Africa when it was under international sanctions due to apartheid policies. During the 1973 oil crisis, the company made money by handling oil contracts through dozens of offshore companies it created. In 1983, US federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani authorized the arrest of Rich and Greene. The indictment totaled 65 counts, including failure to pay taxes amounting to $48 million. The partners fled the United States, after which Rich took Spanish citizenship, and Green took Bolivian citizenship. The company is also suspected of dealings with Saddam Hussein

Marc Rich remained the only company supplying grain to the USSR, despite the international ban due to the war in Afghanistan."

Further, as they said, Glencore received a practically monopoly right to sell aluminum produced in Russia, then lost it, gained it again, and lost it again.
“In 1993, we decided to create an enterprise and visited all the largest companies,” Yuri Shleifshtein, former head of the board of directors of the Bratsk Aluminum Plant, recalled in an interview with the Vedomosti newspaper. “At Marc Rich they told us: you have only one opportunity - to trade through us, because we control this market." But Shleifstein found another opportunity - he agreed with the brothers David and Simon Reuben, owners of a much smaller rival company, Trans World Metals. The Reubens took in the share of Russian entrepreneurs brothers Lev and Mikhail Cherny, who helped them seize control over the exports of the second largest Russian aluminum producer, KrAZ, and then over the Sayan and Novokuznetsk aluminum smelters. And by the mid-1990s, Glencore became only the second aluminum exporter from Russia, losing leadership to the Rubens and Chernys. In 1996, peak in terms of aluminum exports from Russia, Glencore exported 750,000 tons of metal, and Trans World - more than a million, recalls Vishnevsky." - Forbes wrote.
In 1998, the Russian division of Glencore completely stopped working for the future and after the collapse of the financial markets in August, the head office gave the command to sell off Russian assets and focus on collecting debts from suppliers.
“In 2000, Glencore had a chance to regain its role as the largest exporter of Russian aluminum: its worst competitor, the Trans World group, had by this time been expelled from Russia. Its plants were bought by Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich. Together with Oleg Deripaska, they created Russian Aluminum. the newborn aluminum company practically did not have its own sales network abroad, so about 80% of exports had to be carried out through Western traders. “At first it was difficult for them, and in the first two years after the formation of Rusal, Glencore sold quite a large amount of their aluminum,” says Vishnevsky and then he makes a reservation: “The margin, however, was completely different.”

“In 2002, Glencore experienced a new and almost imperceptible change of power from the outside: another chief trader, this time coal, Ivan Glasenberg, became the executive director of the company. The principle of “the one who leaves sells everything” is unshakable, so Willy Strothotte takes the place of chairman of the board of directors - “ reigns, but does not rule," waiting for his colleagues to raise enough money to pay him. The place of head of the London office, traditionally the second person in the company, has recently been taken by oil trader Alex Bird, who oversaw the oil business in Russia for many years. Perhaps It was Bird who convinced Glencore management to decide to participate in the business of a large Russian oil company. Until recently, Glencore had only a stake in the small Nobel Oil, which produces oil in the north of the Komi Republic: the Swiss company was afraid to invade this industry, which is dangerous for foreign investors Russian economy. But in 2003, Glencore allocated, according to estimates, at least $300 million to the owner of the oil company Russneft, Mikhail Gutseriev, for the purchase of new fields, receiving in return from 40% to 49% in the three producing subsidiaries of the oil company: Varyeganneft , Ulyanovskneft and Nafta-Ulyanovsk. For what? The company needed new oil, says one of Forbes' interlocutors at Glencore's Moscow office. The company has lost supplies from YUKOS, the “near-state” oil workers prefer to deal with the trading company Gunvor of Gennady Timchenko, an old acquaintance of President Putin... According to the manager of the Moscow office of Glencore, the Swiss company does not interfere in the management of Russneft, does not claim dividends, and is content with only the fact that all of the company’s exported oil goes through Glencore (“Russneft has exported about 66% of its oil production in recent years, worth about $2.5 billion per year),” wrote the same Forbes.

“Times have changed. Now, in order to obtain raw materials for export, you need to negotiate not with plant directors. With all its gigantic resources and capabilities, Glencore cannot compare with the country’s current main oil trader - the Gunvor company, controlled by President Putin’s former colleague Gennady Timchenko, which sells, estimates range from 70 million tons to 80 million tons of Russian oil per year worth $32-37 billion (for reference: all Russian exports in 2006 were 248 million tons.) “Glencore are foreigners, and from a certain point it ruined their lives, - says the manager of one of the competing companies. - They have exits to Polyanka (the street in Moscow where the main office of Transneft is located - Forbes), but no higher." - again, from the same Forbes article from 2007.

And now Glencore, after a long period of oblivion, has again entered the top of Russian media, but this time in connection with the privatization of Rosneft. And here some suspicions arise as to whether Glencore is something like Gunvor. That is, a shop that performs exactly the same function, but has no official connection either with Russia or with Putin personally.
And yes, let’s remember one of my favorite moments, when Oleg Deripaska accomplished a great PR feat, marking Putin for the second time as a great fighter against the oligarchs. His new appearance as one of the creators of the “Party of Growth” somehow did not work out, so maybe we’ll see him in some new role???

PS. I wouldn’t be surprised if the future (!!!) Ramzan Kadyrov’s ears grow out of his participation in the QIA deal. After all, he often negotiates with officials from this region...

GlencoreInternationalA.G.(Glencore International Corporation)

Glencore International is the successor to the privately held Marc Rich + Co AG, founded by Marc Rich in 1974. An adventurer of Jewish origin, Mark Rich, created a company that works primarily with third world countries, the regimes in which had problems with recognition by economically developed countries, primarily the United States. Marc Rich's company bought (or exchanged) natural resources from these countries and sold them at a large profit for itself on world markets, to which, unlike the “bloody dictators,” it had access. Rich’s company traded Iranian oil in circumvention of the American embargo, purchased nickel and gold from Castro’s Cuba, traded with disgraced Libya and with South Africa when it found itself under international sanctions due to apartheid. Rich's company received huge profits due to the difference between the purchase price and the selling price, due to the lack of competition from the world's largest companies due to the foreign policy difficulties of partner countries. The favorable treatment of Rich's company by the authorities of these countries was probably ensured through bribes.

Rich’s company began operating in the USSR in the 1970s, when relations between the USSR and Western countries became complicated due to the “anti-Semitic” policies of the Soviet government. Rich's trade with the USSR reached significant volumes in the early 1980s, when the United States declared a trade embargo on the USSR due to the war in Afghanistan.

In 1983, Rich was accused by the US Attorney's Office, in particular, of tax evasion (Rich's company actively used offshore schemes to circumvent American laws). This imposed certain restrictions on the activities of Rich's company in the United States, although far from fatal, judging by the growth of Mark Rich's business.

In the early 1990s, Rich's company began operating in Russia. The security service of the Russian branch of the company was headed by the former USSR consul in Geneva, retired KGB general Gennady Ivanushkin. According to available data, the largest volumes of trade transactions were carried out indirectly, in particular, through the company of the Ruben brothers and the Cherny brothers Trans World Group, to the creation of which, according to World Bank researchers, Marc Rich was directly involved. Primarily, Trans World Group worked in the metallurgical sector. According to the company's own estimates, in the first half of the 1990s it controlled half of the country's aluminum industry, which was the most profitable sector of the Russian economy after oil and gas.

In 1994, Marc Rich sold the company Marc Rich + Co AG to his partners (top managers), as a result of which the “odious” Marc Rich AG was transformed into the “respectable” Glencore International AG, headed by one of the company’s top managers, Willy Strothotte. However, the newly created corporation continues to religiously profess Rich’s principle “big fish are caught in troubled waters” and cooperates with regimes that are undesirable to official Western diplomacy around the world. In 2002, the results of the police operation “Cobweb”, initiated in Italy, were summed up, during which the international connections of the Russian mafia were investigated. According to investigators, Russian capital of a number of companies laundering money earned from crime was transferred to Glencore accounts. In particular, the companies of Grigory Luchansky were mentioned, which were allegedly initially created by high-ranking Soviet officials. Connections were established between the Glencore corporation and the Benex company, which was involved in dubious financial transactions of the Bank of New York with loans allocated to Russia totaling $7 billion. In 2002, Glencore Corporation was headed by Ivan Glasenberg, who was a key figure in Marc Rich's entourage.

In 1996-1997, Trans World Group began to have problems, and Glencore emerged from the shadow of its British-Russian partner. TWG clients who sold metal through this company on the London Metal Exchange are reorienting themselves to Glencore. For example, Norilsk Nickel, which until 1997 sold 60% of its products to TWG, after 1997 entered into a contract with Glencore to sell the same 60% of its products. Created with the support of the Cherny brothers, Iskandar Makhmudov’s UMMC company in the 2000s supplied copper to Glencore and its subsidiaries through offshore schemes. Another asset of Makhmudov, Kuzbassrazrezugol, also supplied coal to Glencore through the Austrian trader Krutrade AG. The Russian Copper Company, created in 2003 by Igor Altushkin (Makhmudov’s junior partner), supplied copper to Glencore in amounts close to 100% throughout the 2000s, although it announced future plans to get rid of Glencore’s intermediation and independently sell products on the London Stock Exchange metals

The issue of dependence of Russian metallurgical companies on Glencore Corporation is quite complex and multifaceted. The answer to this lies both in the specific conditions of the formation of Russian private capital in the late 1980s and 1990s, and in the global system of the world economy.

The formation of private capital in Russia since the late 1980s took place under the dominant influence on this process of employees of foreign trade and intelligence structures of the Soviet state, in which Jews played a significant role, which is described in more detail in the Prehistory section (history of the formation of the power elite in Russia and the Urals until 1985). The Glencore corporation and its associated structures were under Jewish control, which may be the answer to the question of how the relationship between the Soviet foreign trade departments and the Glencore corporation was established - through the Jewish diaspora, which played a significant role in the creation of the Comintern and the Soviet foreign intelligence that relied on it .

The global system of the world economy is such that the dominant role in it is played by the largest financial institutions, which, in parallel with the “invisible hand of the market”, and sometimes disguised as it, have a significant influence on production processes, manipulating the price environment and credit resources. One striking example of this is the London Metal Exchange, which occupied a central place in the relationship between Glencore and Russian metallurgical companies. The London Metal Exchange has a five-tier membership system. The highest level members of this system (Ring) are large financial corporations in the USA, Western Europe and Japan. Members of this level determine the official price of metals on the exchange, which is the benchmark for trading metals throughout the planet. The London Metal Exchange acquired such a significant role thanks to the creation of a global transport and logistics infrastructure and the organization of a system of negotiated transactions with derivative financial instruments that minimize the costs of large buyers and sellers of metals, making trading through the London Exchange more profitable than directly from producer to consumer. This benefit, as well as the relatively closed structure of membership of the London Metal Exchange, created the need for Russian metallurgists to work through intermediaries such as the Reuben brothers and Mark Rich, who were elements of this closed system.

However, Glencore Corporation occupies the lowest level in this hierarchy, being a simple trader on the London Metal Exchange (fifth level). The same status has, for example, a subsidiary of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works. The question naturally arises: was the dependence of Russian metallurgists on the Glencore corporation to a sufficient extent due to the peculiarities of the global economic system, or was this dependence due solely to the criminal and corrupt features of the formation of Russian private capital? There is reason to believe that Glencore Corporation is only part of a system that includes large financial institutions. But Glencore’s connection with these institutions is not advertised, which allows respectable financial organizations to avoid responsibility for the actions of swindlers like Marc Rich that do not comply with the formal rules of business, not to mention their Russian partners, the Cherny brothers, along with criminal authorities, corrupt government officials and intelligence officers. Thus, Glencore's ability to trade on the London Metal Exchange may have gone beyond the rights of an ordinary trader.

An indirect confirmation of these assumptions can be the agreement concluded in 2012 between the Rosneft company, on the one hand, and the Glencore and Vitol corporations, on the other hand, on the supply of oil to these corporations in the amount of $50 billion over 5 years. It is assumed that this contract was concluded as part of servicing a credit line (presumably worth $45 billion) provided to Rosneft by a number of international banks for the purchase of the TNK-BP oil company. In fact, Glencore and Vitol acted as guarantors of the return of funds for a group of banks that issued a loan to Rosneft.

In 2011, Glencore held an IPO on the London Stock Exchange. The company's total capitalization was $59.3 billion. The IPO raised about $10 billion. This became the second largest IPO on the London Stock Exchange. The first place was retained by Rosneft, which raised $10.7 billion in 2006.

As of the beginning of 2012, 58% of Glencore shares belonged to the company's management. The largest shareholders among them were:

Ivan Glasenberg - 15.8%;

- Daniel Francisco Mate – 6%;

Aristotle Mistakidis – 6%;

Thor Peterson - 5.3%;

Alex Bird - 4.6%.

In 2012, Glencore completed the takeover of large mining company Xstrata. As a result, Glencore became one of the world's largest mining companies with a capitalization of about $82 billion. During this takeover, the Qatar Investment Authority (owned by the Qatari government) became one of the largest shareholders of Xstrata, whose actions increased the cost of the transaction for Glencore. As a result of the merger of the two companies, Xstrata shareholders received 47.4% of the shares of the combined company, which means that the Qatar sovereign fund, which owned about 12% of Xstrata shares, became a major shareholder of Glencore.

In the 2000s, the head of the Glencore International representative office in Russia was Yana Robertovna Tikhonova. Information was published that Yana Tikhonova’s husband is an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Denis Aleksandrovich Sugrobov. In 2011, Denis Sugrobov was appointed head of the Main Directorate of Economic Security and Anti-Corruption of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation. In 2014, the main anti-corruption fighter, Denis Sugrobov, was himself suspected of committing corruption crimes and dismissed. In addition, it was reported that the husband of Yana Tikhonova’s sister is Konstantin Anatolyevich Chuichenko, who in 2008 became the head of the Control Directorate of the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation, when Dmitry Medvedev was elected President of the Russian Federation.

According to the Vedomosti newspaper in 2016, the largest shareholders of Glencore were:

- “Qatar Holdings” (investment division of the sovereign fund of Qatar) - 8.99%;

Ivan Glasenberg - 8.42%;

- Daniel Francisco Mate – 3.19%;

Aristotle Mistakidis – 3.17%;

Thor Peterson - 2.8%;

- Alex Bird - 2.45%.

In December 2016, a consortium consisting of Glencore and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund bought a 19.5% stake in Rosneft for €10.2 billion from the Russian state-owned Rosneftegaz. As a result, the consortium became the third largest shareholder of Rosneft after Rosneftegaz (50% plus 3 shares) and the British company British Petroleum (19.75%). Russian President Vladimir Putin, in connection with the sale of Rosneft shares, said: “I really hope that the arrival of new investors ... in the management bodies will improve corporate procedures and the transparency of the company.” A version was voiced that the Russian budget deficit was being filled by selling Rosneft shares.

According to the RBC newspaper, as part of the deal, an agreement was concluded that limited liability partnership QHG Trading , created in the UK by structures Glencore with Qatar Holding , within 5 years will be able to annually receive from 4.5 million to 11 million tons of oil produced by Rosneft. Thus, Glencore actually extended the contract concluded with Rosneft in 2012.

Of the 10.2 billion euros spent on the purchase of Rosneft shares, Glencore invested only €300 million of its own funds. The Qatari fund invested 2.5 billion euros. The remaining funds were provided by banks on credit. The main creditor (5.2 billion euros) was the Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo, whose management is allegedly very loyal to the Russian authorities.

One of the questions that arose about the deal was what it meant for the Qatar fund. The fund was created to diversify income from the sale of oil and gas by Qatar, and therefore it is not very logical to use the fund’s funds to purchase shares of an oil company in Russia. The Qatar Foundation is a shareholder of Glencore , which, being an oil trader, is interested in this transaction. But this could hardly serve as a sufficient reason for the participation of the Qatar Fund in the transaction, given that the Qatar Fund is not very friendly towards the company’s management Glencore , which in total controls more shares Glencore than the Qatar fund. It is most likely that in exchange for participation in the deal, the Qatar Fund received consent from Russia to join OPEC’s decision to limit oil production.

Some media, in particular Novaya Gazeta, voiced a version that senior government officials and top managers of Rosneft from the entourage of Russian President Vladimir Putin used Glencore and the Qatar Fund in order to obtain Rosneft shares into personal possession. As far as Qatar is concerned, this version is unlikely, given that Qatar is Russia’s political adversary in the Middle East and one of Russia’s main competitors in the gas market. And using an enemy to implement secret schemes means giving him a weapon to blackmail against himself. Another thing is Glencore, which has earned a reputation as a company that responds very flexibly to the non-public needs of government officials, including Russian ones, with whom Glencore has a long history of relationships. According to the Vedomosti newspaper, after the completion of the transaction, Glencore's effective share in Rosneft amounted to 0.54% of the shares, although under the terms of the agreement Glencore was supposed to receive 9.75% of the shares. It is unknown who controls the remaining 9.21% of shares.

Glencore is currently one of the world's largest mining companies, as well as a major oil and grain trader.

Date of information update: 2017.

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