Ex-Glencore boss bags £1.7billion shares gain

GLENCORE’S former chief executive has seen the value of his shares in the commodities giant rise by more than £1.7 billion.

Ivan Glasenberg’s stake in Glencore has soared to £5.7billion in the past year as commodities prices have spiked. The surge in the value comes amid a wave of recent bribery convictions.The 65-year-old South African is the company’s largest shareholder, with a 9.3 per cent stake, according to Refinitiv data.

Since he retired in June 2021, the Anglo-Swiss company has pleaded guilty to a string of offences relating to a corruption scandal.

A Glencore subsidiary admitted in June to shelling out £23 million worth of bribes to officials in Africa to obtain preferential access to oil. A probe by the Serious Fraud Office revealed the FTSE100 firm’s palmgreasing, which spanned Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast and South Sudan.

Glencore admitted similar offences in the US, with its global corruption fines totalling nearly £1billion.

The firm’s chief executive, Gary Nagle, has said he wanted to draw a line under the cases. Earlier this year, he said ‘this type of behaviour has no place in Glencore’. Chairman Kalidas Madhavpeddi said it was ‘not the company it was when the unacceptable practices behind this misconduct occurred’.

The investigations into Glencore kicked off under the tenure of Glasenberg, who was appointed chief executive in 2002. He took the firm public in 2011 and has since seen his net worth skyrocket.

Glencore’s share price stands at £4.72 after rising by more than 40 per cent in the past year. The company declined to comment.