IVAN Glasenberg, CEO of Glencore, could wait until well into 2021 before formally stepping down from the company he has run for the past ten years, said Reuters.
Citing an interview Glasenberg held with Swiss paper NZZ, Reuters said a new CEO of Glencore would have to be first introduced to customers which would require travel, currently inhibited by Covid-19 related restrictions.
He added that the new CEO would most likely be an internal appointment. “The next CEO shouldn’t have a shadow hanging over him,” Glasenberg said. “I’m confident, because it will be an internal successor who has worked under me for many years and whom I trust.”
Glasenberg has been preparing for his exit from Glencore for a year at least, having first alerted investors of his interest in moving on in “three to five years” in 2018.
When he does step down, Glasenberg will be the last of the so-called ‘Billionaires Club’ – the executives who helped bring Glencore to the London Stock Exchange in May, 2011 and became fabulously rich as a result.
“When I leave here I want to go into a totally different business where the business drives the multiples, and not the market,” he told delegates at the Financial Times Commodities Mining Summit in October.
Commenting on promises at the FT conference by Mark Cutifani, CEO of Anglo American that his group would have its Quellaveco project completed on schedule in 2022, Glasenberg quipped: “Maybe I’ll hang around a bit longer, just to see if Mark is able to develop Quellaveco on time”.
