How many people does xstrata employee

We are pleased to report good progress over the past year against our commitments on the transition to a low-carbon economy. We were founded in , initially focused on the marketing of ferrous and non-ferrous metals and minerals, crude oil and oil products. Explore our history. Find out more about the people who run the company - from the Board and management structure, to the Board committees. Read more about our governance frameworks, including Board committees, compliance and group policies.

Nobody more so than Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg, a lean publicity-shy operator whose sport is race-walking. Glasenberg, 54, grew up in South Africa and has been a champion walker for both South Africa and Israel. Each morning he runs or swims, often with colleagues.

He does not suffer fools and has a fiery temper, but is also intensely charming and has a sharp memory for details about people, according to people who know him. Rich escaped Nazi Europe as a seven year old, and grew up in the United States. He launched the trading group which would become Glencore under his own name in Rich was a sensation in commodity circles -- he is credited by some with the invention of the spot market for crude oil -- but by U.

In the time of the Shah, Rich says, he engineered a deal for a secret pipeline through which Iran could pump oil to Israel. And he went where others feared to tread -- geographically and morally. Trust and loyalty are very important to him. Living as a fugitive put a strain on Rich, but according to Ammann, it was a business blunder in that paved the way for the power struggle that ended his connection with the trading house he had founded.

Rich was ultimately forced to sell out to his management and hand over control to a former metals trader, the German Willy Strothotte. Related Coverage. See more stories. The company was reborn under Strothotte as Glencore.

The firm continued to trade, make money -- and occasionally become implicated in controversial dealings. Glencore maintained that if any payments were made by agents it did not know or approve of them. Could a flotation shed unwanted light on the business methods that have so far stayed under the radar?

Katanga had just the right combination of elements: relationships built over time, a project in need of funds and an exclusive marketing agreement, and the scope for equity participation. The acquisition was the culmination of 18 months of deal-making in Congo, where the first freely elected government in four decades had embarked on a sweeping review of mining licenses granted by previous regimes.

As the credit crisis began to bite, metals prices tanked and risky companies around the world found it ever tougher to raise finance. Where others saw risks, though, Glencore scented opportunity. Offtake deals are common in risky projects like mining, where banks are reluctant to lend because of uncertainty about how they will be repaid.

An offtake ensures a miner has customers before it starts digging, and provides a guaranteed source of raw materials to a trader, which can also act as security if the trader provides finance. By investing in Nikanor, Glencore consolidated a powerful partnership: half of the stake it bought was on behalf of a trust linked to Gertler, an old Congo hand who industry sources say has close ties to government officials including President Joseph Kabila.

The trading company was ready to oblige. Just one month later, Katanga and its neighbor Nikanor merged, giving Glencore 8. Glencore, exercising a clause from its earlier Nikanor purchase, appointed a caretaker chief executive. It was then that Katanga embarked on its increasingly desperate search for new funds. The Swiss trading firm subsequently sold on about a quarter of the loans to RP Capital, a hedge fund also linked to Gertler.

Most of that equity, too, went to Glencore. Last year, the Paradise Papers revealed that Glencore paid huge sums of money to a corrupt fixer to obtain mining interests in DRC. The company directly employs 83, people around the world, with a total of , including contractors. This is a Frankenstein company, stitched together with body parts. Glencore is a hybrid, whose sole purpose is to make money, a corporate colossus with a stranglehold on world resources.

The company has built up an extremely complex network of 80 or more subsidiaries on five continents, using shell corporations, partnerships and offshore accounts to obscure transactions and avoid tax, and working with corrupt intermediaries to gain access to resources. IndustriALL affiliates are seeking to negotiate with the company at a global level, to create a transparent mechanism for resolving disputes wherever they arise.

Before Rich, oil production and trading was dominated by big, established companies like BP and Exxon, who made long term deals with stable governments. Rich flew into conflict zones with borrowed money, making deals with officials to buy oil directly. Rich brought two great innovations to the world of commodities trading: defying international law, and using leverage — trading with borrowed money and reselling at a profit — to corner lucrative markets.

In the s, Rich worked with the Israeli secret service, Mossad, to set up a secret pipeline to sell Iranian oil to Israel. In , Rich was charged in the US with tax evasion, fraud, trading with the enemy and illegal business dealings. In , the company went public and was listed on three stock exchanges; London, Hong Kong and Johannesburg.

Glencore profits from the misery of others. It is an ogre with the feet of a ballerina, honing in on shortages and disaster with razor-sharp precision. The business model is to borrow money to buy controlling stakes of commodities, influencing the price and potentially making a huge profit.

Glencore originally traded mostly in oil, but moved into coal, zinc, copper, lead, nickel, ferroalloys, iron, aluminium and agricultural products. Seeing the benefit of controlling production as well as trade, Glencore began investing in mining company Xstrata in The company has moved along commodities supply chains, controlling primary extraction as well as value added processing and logistics, and bought controlling interests in mines, coal terminals and freighters, refineries, smelters and warehouses.

Glencore also moved into agriculture, buying interests in grains, oils, cotton, sugar and storage facilities. To ensure more sustainable and long-term sources of financing for commodities deals, Glencore has begun to form partnerships with state-owned sovereign wealth funds, such as the Qatar Investment Authority QIA , which owns 8. In , QIA and Glencore bought In , Glencore was fined in South Africa for supplying substandard coal to utility company Eskom, and accused by the government of Ghana in for illegally importing and reselling petroleum products.

The company was also accused of tax evasion in Zambia in , and in the UK Court of Appeal upheld sanctions against Glencore for tax evasion.