If shareholders ever complain about the pain they have endured holding Glencore shares since the group’s 2011 flotation, chief executive Ivan Glasenberg has a reply to shut them up: he has suffered far more.
The 58-year-old South African has lost about £4.4bn on the value of his stake since floating the business, with his current holding worth about £1.5bn.
About $780m (£510m) of dividends during that time may have softened the blow, but his troubles seem to be in stark contrast to how smoothly Glasenberg’s career progressed before the flotation.
Glasenberg has been chief executive of Glencore since 2002, but joined the business in 1984 as a coal trader in South Africa, moving to Australia, Hong Kong and Beijing on his way to the top.
In a 2005 article in Business Week, he was identified at one of “the Rich boys” – the Glencore elite who learned their trade from the firm’s founder, Marc Rich, who fled to Switzerland when he was charged by US authorities with selling oil to Iran during the 1979-81 hostage crisis. Rich was pardoned by Bill Clinton on the president’s last day in the White House.
