Retiring Glasenberg handing over Glencore reins to Gary Nagle

4th December 2020

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

     

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JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg announced on Friday that he would be handing over the reins of the global mining and marketing company in mid-2021 to top Glencore executive Gary Nagle, who has served the company for more than two decades and is well-known in South Africa, where he ran Glencore’s ferroalloys business.

Mining Weekly can report that the succession announcement has been made at a time when the level of performance of the London- and Johannesburg-listed company is at a high and, as CFO Steve Kalmin reported, the company is in peak financial fitness.

Glencore chairperson Tony Hayward said that the board had been working with Glasenberg over the past two years to oversee a seamless transition.

Glasenberg regards 65 was the right age for him to hand over to a new generation and younger leader and will be working with Nagle during the first half of 2021.

Also using Friday’s presentation to spell out the pathway Glencore will be following to reduce emissions and lower its coal production – while investing in metals that help to mitigate against climate change – Glasenberg said the company’s diversified portfolio positioned Glencore uniquely to move out of coal responsibly while ascending into the quickly emerging low-carbon economy.

Nagle, 45, started with Glasenberg in the coal division 21 years ago, and has had considerable global experience. On joining the company, Nagle initially ran Glencore's coal assets in Colombia, relocated to South Africa, where he ran Glencore's ferroalloys division, and then promoted to Australia to run the global coal division.

Nagle, who will be relocating from Australia to Switzerland, pledged in a media release to continue to deliver value to shareholders, while operating safely and responsibly.

The transition is coinciding with debt being reduced to extremely low levels, free cash being generated in large quantities and the company being well positioned to reward its shareholders going forward.

“We’re going into the third generation of the leaders of the company and all the leaders who have taken over the various assets within the company, at both the trading and the operating sides of the business, have come from internal appointments.

“We’ve always ensured that there’s great succession potential in the company and that we have leaders ready to take over the business. I’ve always said that I wished to leave the company by the age of 65. I believe that’s the right time that I should be leaving a company of this size and nature and work ethic that we have in the company, and it’s time to hand over to the new generation, and a younger leader.

“In the succession process, it could have been three to four parties who could easily have taken over the position of this new generation, the 45-year-old generation, who should be running this company and taking it forward,” Glasenberg, who will be working closely with Nagle ahead of next year's mid-year handover, told Investor Day 2020, covered by Mining Weekly.

Nagle has commerce and accounting degrees from Wits University and qualified as a chartered accountant in South Africa in 1999. He served on the board of the now defunct Lonmin plc from 2013 to 2015 and has represented Glencore on the minerals councils in Colombia and Australia, where he is currently Sydney-based and serving as global head of Glencore’s coal industrial business.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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