Glencore plc is a Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company with headquarters in Baar, Switzerland. Glencore's oil and gas head office is in London and its registered office is in Saint Helier, Jersey. The current company was created through a merger of Glencore with Xstrata on 2 May 2013.[4] As of 2015[actualizar], it ranked tenth in the Fortune Global 500 list of the world's largest companies.[5] In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Glencore International was ranked as the 484th-largest public company in the world.[6] As of July 2022, it is the world's largest commodity trader.[7]
As Glencore International, the company was already one of the world's largest integrated producers and marketers of commodities. It was the largest company in Switzerland as well as the world's largest commodities trading company, with a 2010 global market share of 60% in internationally tradable zinc, 50% in internationally tradable copper, 9% in the internationally tradable grain market and 3% in the internationally tradable oil market.[8][9][10]
Glencore has a number of production facilities all around the world and supplied metals, minerals, crude oil, oil products, coal, natural gas and agricultural products to international customers in the automotive, power generation, steel production and food processing industries.[9] The company was formed in 1994 by a management buyout of Marc Rich + Co AG (itself founded in 1974).[9] It was listed on the London Stock Exchange in May 2011 and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.[11][12] It had a secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, but it has withdrawn from January 2018.[13] Glencore's shares started trading on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in November 2013.[14] The Qatar Investment Authority is its biggest shareholder as of 2016.[15] In March 2022, Qatar's Sovereign Wealth Fund announced it would sell a stake worth £812 million (US$1.1 billion) in Glencore Plc.[16]
La empresa fue fundada en 1974 como Marc Rich & Co. AG por los comerciantes de materias primas Marc Rich y Pincus Green . En 1993, varios empleados de Marc Rich, encabezados por Claude Dauphin , se marcharon para fundar otra empresa comercial, Trafigura . [17] [18] En 1994, después de no poder tomar el control del mercado del zinc y perder 172 millones de dólares, Rich se vio obligado [19] [20] a vender su participación mayoritaria en la empresa a Glencore International, la empresa industrial y de comercio de productos básicos. . [ 21] El nombre de Glencore es una abreviatura de " Gl obal En ergy Commodity Resources ". [22]
La Radio Nacional de la Australian Broadcasting Corporation informó en 2005 que Glencore "ha sido acusada de tratos ilegales con estados rebeldes : el apartheid de Sudáfrica, la URSS , Irán e Irak bajo Saddam Hussein ", y tiene un "historial de romper embargos de la ONU para obtener ganancias". de regímenes corruptos o despóticos". [23] Específicamente, la CIA descubrió que Glencore había pagado 3.222.780 dólares en sobornos ilegales para obtener petróleo en el curso del programa de petróleo por alimentos de la ONU para Irak . La empresa negó estas acusaciones, según el informe de la CIA citado por ABC. [23] [24]
En 2005, las ganancias de una venta de petróleo a Glencore fueron confiscadas como ganancias fraudulentas como parte de una investigación sobre corrupción en la República Democrática del Congo . [25]