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THE BIGGEST COMPANY YOU NEVER HEARD of a Powerful and Secretive Swiss Trader Is Likely to List This Year

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THE BIGGEST COMPANY YOU NEVER HEARD of a Powerful and Secretive Swiss Trader Is Likely to List This Year REUTERS/ CHRIstIAN HArtMANN THE BIGGEST COMPANY YOU NEVER HEARD OF A powerful and secretive Swiss trader is likely to list this year. Can the Goldman Sachs of commodity trading survive going public? BY ERIC ONstAD, LAURA MACINNIS AND six months and was running out of cash. months, and Congo -- still struggling to QUENTIN WEBB Needing to finance its mining projects in the recover from a civil war that killed some BAAR, SWITZERLAND, FEB. 25 Democratic Republic of Congo -- a country five million people – was the last place an which has some of the world’s richest investor wanted to be. n Christmas Eve 2008, in the depths reserves of copper and cobalt -- Katanga’s One company, though, was interested. of the global financial crisis, Katanga executives had sounded the alarm and made Executives in the wealthy Swiss village MiningO accepted a lifeline it could not refuse. a string of calls for help. of Baar, working in the wood-panelled The Toronto-listed company had lost 97 Global credit was drying up, the copper conference rooms in Glencore International’s percent of its market value over the previous market had fallen 70 percent in just five white metallic headquarters, did their sums FEBRUARY 2011 GLENcore FebruARY 2011 and were prepared to make a deal. Their often brilliant, its staff dominate their market. and Royal Dutch Shell and from there into the terms were simple. The firm’s top executives have forged alliances pension funds and investment portfolios of They wanted control. with Russian oligarchs and well-connected millions of people who know virtually nothing For about $500 million in a convertible African mining magnates. Like Goldman, about the secretive giant. It would also loan and rights issue, Katanga agreed to issue Glencore uses its considerable heft to extract represent a huge payday for investment banks more than a billion new shares and hand the best possible terms in every deal it does. -– perhaps $300 to $400 million, according what would become a stake of 74 percent to Some might add that Glencore also fits the to estimates by Freeman & Co., a mergers and Glencore, the world’s biggest commodities description that Rolling Stone magazine gave acquisitions consultancy. trading group. Today, with copper prices to Goldman: “a great vampire squid wrapped regularly setting records above $10,000 a around the face of humanity”. “THEIR KNOWLEDGE tonne, Katanga’s stock market value is nearly Sometime in the coming weeks, Glencore $3.2 billion. is likely to announce its Initial Public Offering. OF THE FLOW OF Deals like Katanga have helped turn The firm currently operates as a privately COMMODITIES IS TRULY Glencore into Switzerland’s top-grossing held partnership, with staff sharing the company and earned it comparisons with profits according to a performance-based FRIGHTENING. ” investment banking giant Goldman Sachs. incentives scheme. Sources familiar with In the world of physical trading -- buying, Glencore’s plans say it may list 20 percent At the same time, it would force a company transporting and selling the basic stuff the of the company, possibly split between the that for four decades has thrived outside the world needs -- Glencore is omnipresent and London Stock Exchange and Hong Kong. Such limelight to reveal some of its secrets. Can controversial, just as Goldman is in banking. a listing could yield up to $16 billion and value it withstand becoming a household name? Bigger than Nestle, Novartis and UBS in the firm at as much as $60 billion. Does it risk losing its prized traders? Given terms of revenues, Glencore’s network of Fuelled by the lofty prices in many of the Glencore’s impeccable timing in deals, is an 2,000 traders, lawyers, accountants and other raw materials that Glencore buys, mines, IPO a certain sign that we’ve reached the top staff in 40 countries gives it real-time market ships and sells, the float would be among the of the commodities cycle? and political intelligence on everything from biggest in London’s history. It could launch “Their knowledge of the flow of oil markets in Central Asia to what sugar’s the firm onto the FTSE 100 index alongside commodities around the world is truly doing in southeast Asia. Young, arrogant, and resource giants such as BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, frightening,” says an outsider who has worked 2 GLENcore FebruARY 2011 closely with senior Glencore officials and who, “It’s amazing how this formula has flown like most people interviewed by Reuters for FOUR under the radar for so long, as the profits and this report, declined to be identified speaking growth of these firms has been astounding.” about the company for fear it could jeopardise DECADES Glencore’s profit after tax topped $4.75 IN THE sensitive business relationships. Glencore billion in 2008, not far off its best year ever, executives declined to comment on the record, 2007, when profit ran to around $5.19 billion. though the company did issue a statement SHADOWS Even in the gruesome market of 2009, it about its current disclosure policy. raked in more than $2.72 billion. 1974 Founded as Marc Rich + Co. Performance is rewarded on a scale that UNDER THE RADAR 1987 Buys first stake in an industrial asset: would turn even Wall Street green, with NESTLING IN A LAKESIDE village in 27% of U.S. Mount Holly aluminium smelter bonuses for star traders running into the tens Switzerland’s low-tax canton of Zug, 1988 Takes first controlling position in an of millions. Glencore’s 500 partners and key Glencore’s starkly modern headquarters industrial asset with two-thirds stake in staff are sitting on a book value of $20 billion. reflect a culture where trading aggression Peruvian mine The secret, says the second outsider, is the is coupled with public discretion. In front of 1994 Marc Rich sells his stake; company traders’ incredible focus. “I don’t recall talking the building a simple concrete sculpture -- a renamed Glencore to any of these guys -- and I’ve spent a lot of sphere spinning atop a pyramid -- hints at 1996 Company sells first bonds to investors time with them -- about anything other than Glencore’s global reach. Inside, the hushed 2001 In the final days of his presidency, business,” he told Reuters. “I have no idea hallways are adorned with modern art, the U.S. President Bill Clinton pardons Rich what sort of family life these guys have. This offices eerily quiet. 2002 Swiss peer Xstrata buys $2.5 billion is everything.” “Glencore is looked on as guys screaming of Glencore coal assets and lists in London. Employees are hired young and expected into telephones, but it’s more the dull old Ivan Glasenberg succeeds Willy Strothotte, to make a career at the group, where they business of logistics,” says a mining industry also Xstrata chairman, as chief executive are known as either “thinkers” -- bright source, describing hours spent on the phone 2008-9 Company begins to lift veil of secrecy number-crunchers who design the company’s and organising trade-related paperwork. as credit crisis sends the cost of insuring its complex financial deals -- or “soldiers”, the “Glencore trading floors are more akin to DHL debt to severely distressed levels hard-driven traders who fight to win the offices than Goldman Sachs.” 2009 Issues $2.2 billion of convertible transactions. Yet within the commodities and mining bonds in move “towards the public equity The company’s 10 division managers are sectors, Glencore is regarded with a mix markets” aged 37 to 52 and remain largely anonymous of admiration and fear. “It’s an incredibly outside Glencore’s business circles. “They’re performance-based culture -- investment really bright guys, they are really focused, they banking times three, probably,” says a play to win every day,” says a mining executive second outsider. in North America. Or as the second outsider Glencore’s client list is a roster of the puts it: “They look like kids, really -- but they world’s largest firms including BP, Total, GET PHYSICAL: A worker climbs down the are incredibly impressive individuals.” stairs of an oil storage tank at a Glencore-owned Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhilips, Chevron, Vale, terminal in Singapore, 2008. Nobody more so than Chief Executive Rio Tinto, ArcelorMittal and Sony, as well as REUTERS/Tim Chong the national oil companies of Iran, Mexico and Brazil and public utilities in Spain, France, China, Taiwan and Japan. Physical commodities traders, like Glencore and its main rivals Vitol, Trafigura and Cargill, make their money finding customers for raw materials and selling them at a mark-up, using complex hedges to reduce the risk of bad weather, market swings, piracy or regime change. Unlike Chicago traders who scream out bets on the future prices of orange juice or pork bellies, physical commodity traders negotiate prices and arrange shipments of cargo quietly, keeping their positions well hidden from others. “It’s modern financial engineering meshed with an old-fashioned commodity trading house,” said John Kilduff, a partner at the hedge fund Again Capital LLC in New York. 3 GLENcore FebruARY 2011 Ivan Glasenberg, a lean publicity-shy operator whose sport is race-walking. A $60 BILLION company? Glasenberg, 54, grew up in South Africa and has been a champion walker for both Glencore’s equity could be worth roughly $60 billion – but little more than South Africa and Israel. Each morning he a third of that derives from its vaunted trading business. Here’s how one runs or swims, often with colleagues. “The leading research team values the company, based on the prices of its share thing about Ivan, he can fly in and meet holdings and the commodities it produces, plus the valuation multiples the presidents of countries but he also talks market applies to listed rivals such as Noble Group.
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