Glencore suffers amid commodity rout

Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg. File picture: Arnd Wiegmann

Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg. File picture: Arnd Wiegmann

Published Sep 29, 2015

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New York - Ivan Glasenberg is running out of luck.

The South African-born accountant, whose Glencore rode the China-fuelled boom in commodities the past 10 years like no one else, is emerging as the most prominent casualty of the bust.

The descent has been so swift that many investors are now wondering where it will end. As Glencore’s share price fell by 27 percent in Hong Kong on Tuesday, the credit markets registered mounting worries about its debt load: Its bonds tumbled and derivatives traders started demanding upfront payments to protect against a default by the company, the first time that’s happened since 2009. Its London shares plunged by almost a third on Monday, bringing losses since March to about 76 percent.

“People smell blood, and they are circling,” said Clive Burstow, who helps manage $44 billion at Baring Asset Management in London. “The market is looking for someone to test and Glencore is in the sights.”

While traders were at a loss to identify the catalyst for Monday’s rout, the underlying reasons have remained constant: commodity prices are too low, Glencore’s debt is too high and growth in China, the engine that drove prices for everything from copper to coal to oil is the weakest it’s been in a quarter century.

In recent weeks, Glencore has sought to reassure investors by promising to prepare its finances for any doomsday scenario. Even after scrapping the dividend, raising $2.5 billion in a share sale and vowing to sell assets, the selloff has continued.

Debt rules

“All of the miners, including Glencore, broke nearly every rule in the mining books these past 10 years - and that includes the holy books about debt,” Peter Major, a mining analyst at Cadiz Corporate Solutions in Cape Town, said by phone. “Now almost all of them are paying the price.”

At its height in 2014, Glencore was worth more than $85 billion after its $29 billion all-share takeover of Xstrata, then the world’s biggest coal exporter. Even as recently as August 2014, Glasenberg made an approach to buy Rio Tinto Group, the second-biggest miner. That was rebuffed. As of Monday in London, Rio’s market capitalisation was $59 billion, almost four times Glencore’s.

Glencore, based in Zug, Switzerland, trades everything from wheat to oil to cobalt. It’s the world’s biggest exporter of power-station coal, with more than 30 mines in Australia, Colombia and South Africa and is among the top three agricultural exporters in Russia, the European Union, Canada and Australia. The company controls more than 150 mining and metallurgical, oil production and agricultural assets and employs about 180 000 people.

For all that, Investec, an investment bank, said Monday that there would be little left for shareholders should low prices persist. Goldman Sachs Group said last week that Glencore’s steps to reduce debt and bolster its balance sheet were inadequate.

Honing skills

Glasenberg, a former coal trader, honed his skills over more than 30 years in the commodity trading business since he joined a predecessor firm, Marc Rich & Company, in 1984. He was part of a $1.2 billion management buyout from Rich in 1994, which saw the company renamed Glencore. The 2011 IPO made him a billionaire on paper with his stake worth almost $10 billion.

Glasenberg has also been one of the industry’s most outspoken figures, railing against rivals for oversupplying the market and saying fellow executives had “screwed up” by building too many mines. He has also taken the lead on trying to remedy the problem, cutting output at its Australian coal mines and saying last month that it would close copper mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia that account for about 2.2 percent of global supply.

Rivals slide

Glencore’s rivals haven’t been left unscathed. In London trading, BHP Billiton, the world’s biggest mining company, has fallen 26 percent this year, while Rio Tinto has declined 30 percent. Anglo American, which like Glencore is highly leveraged, has slumped 53 percent. The Bloomberg World Mining Index of producers has shed 32 percent this year.

The slide continued in Asia on Tuesday, with Rio’s Sydney- traded shares losing 5 percent to A$46.335 and BHP slipping 6.1 percent to A$21.73 as of 11.31am in Sydney.

“The sector is having a tough time,” said John Meyer, a mining analyst at broker SP Angel Corporate Finance in London. Glencore and the other miners are going to have a tough time until at least year end.’’

Debt cutting

Glencore announced a debt-cutting programme earlier this month in an attempt to reduce the company’s borrowings to $20 billion from $30 billion. The company has also has hired Citigroup and Credit Suisse Group AG to sell a minority stake in its agricultural business, a person familiar with the situation said on Friday. The company carries a heavier debt load than its rivals as it uses borrowings to help fund its trading operations though has also boosted debt with acquisitions including the C$6.1 billion ($4.6 billion) purchase of Canadian grain trader Viterra in 2012.

Still, not everyone shares that doom.

“When you see this sort of fire sale, either a business is going bust or there are forced redemptions,” said Meyer.

“Funds are being forced to sell into a weak market. For me it offers an unparalleled opportunity.”

Peter Grauer, the chairman of Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, is a senior independent non-executive director at Glencore.

* With assistance from James Paton in Sydney

BLOOMBERG

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