The murky privatization of Rosneft and Glencore. Glencore, which has long been associated with Russian oligarchs, has disclosed details of the purchase of Rosneft shares for €10.2 billion, the deal will be closed in mid-December Glencore Ivan Glasenberg

GlencoreInternationalA.G.(Glencore International Corporation)

Glencore International is the successor private company Marc Rich + Co AG, founded by Marc Rich in 1974. An adventurer of Jewish origin, Mark Rich, created a company that works primarily with third world countries, the regimes in which had problems with recognition by economically developed countries, primarily the United States. Marc Rich's company bought (or exchanged) natural resources from these countries and sold them at a large profit for itself on world markets, to which, unlike the “bloody dictators,” it had access. Rich’s company traded Iranian oil in circumvention of the American embargo, purchased nickel and gold from Castro’s Cuba, traded with disgraced Libya and with South Africa when it found itself under international sanctions due to apartheid. Rich's company received huge profits due to the difference between the purchase price and the selling price, due to the lack of competition from the world's largest companies due to the foreign policy difficulties of partner countries. The favorable treatment of Rich's company by the authorities of these countries was probably ensured through bribes.

Rich’s company began operating in the USSR in the 1970s, when relations between the USSR and Western countries became complicated due to the “anti-Semitic” policies of the Soviet government. Rich's trade with the USSR reached significant volumes in the early 1980s, when the United States declared a trade embargo on the USSR due to the war in Afghanistan.

In 1983, Rich was accused by the US Attorney's Office, in particular, of tax evasion (Rich's company actively used offshore schemes to circumvent American laws). This imposed certain restrictions on the activities of Rich's company in the United States, although far from fatal, judging by the growth of Mark Rich's business.

In the early 1990s, Rich's company began operating in Russia. The security service of the Russian branch of the company was headed by the former USSR consul in Geneva, retired KGB general Gennady Ivanushkin. According to available data, the largest volumes of trade transactions were carried out indirectly, in particular, through the company of the Ruben brothers and the Cherny brothers Trans World Group, to the creation of which, according to World Bank researchers, Marc Rich was directly involved. Primarily, Trans World Group worked in the metallurgical sector. According to the company's own estimates, in the first half of the 1990s it controlled half of the country's aluminum industry, which was the most profitable industry Russian economy after oil and gas.

In 1994, Marc Rich sold the company Marc Rich + Co AG to his partners (top managers), as a result of which the “odious” Marc Rich AG was transformed into the “respectable” Glencore International AG, headed by one of the company’s top managers, Willy Strothotte. However, the newly created corporation continues to religiously profess Rich’s principle “big fish are caught in troubled waters” and cooperates with regimes that are undesirable to official Western diplomacy around the world. In 2002, the results of the police operation “Cobweb”, initiated in Italy, were summed up, during which the international connections of the Russian mafia were investigated. According to investigators, Russian capital of a number of companies laundering money earned from crime was transferred to Glencore accounts. In particular, the companies of Grigory Luchansky were mentioned, which were allegedly initially created by high-ranking Soviet officials. Connections were established between the Glencore corporation and the Benex company, which was involved in dubious financial transactions of the Bank of New York with loans allocated to Russia for total amount 7 billion dollars. In 2002, Glencore Corporation was headed by Ivan Glasenberg, who was a key figure in Marc Rich's entourage.

In 1996-1997, Trans World Group began to have problems, and Glencore emerged from the shadow of its British-Russian partner. TWG clients who sold metal through this company on the London Metal Exchange are reorienting themselves to Glencore. For example, Norilsk Nickel, which until 1997 sold 60% of its products to TWG, after 1997 entered into a contract with Glencore to sell the same 60% of its products. Created with the support of the Cherny brothers, Iskandar Makhmudov’s UMMC company in the 2000s supplied copper to Glencore and its subsidiaries through offshore schemes. Another asset of Makhmudov, Kuzbassrazrezugol, also supplied coal to Glencore through the Austrian trader Krutrade AG. The Russian Copper Company, created in 2003 by Igor Altushkin (Makhmudov’s junior partner), supplied copper to Glencore in amounts close to 100% throughout the 2000s, although it announced future plans to get rid of Glencore’s intermediation and independently sell products on the London Stock Exchange metals

The issue of dependence of Russian metallurgical companies on Glencore Corporation is quite complex and multifaceted. The answer to this lies both in the specific conditions of the formation of Russian private capital in the late 1980s and 1990s, and in the global system of the world economy.

The formation of private capital in Russia since the late 1980s took place under the dominant influence on this process of employees of foreign trade and intelligence structures of the Soviet state, in which Jews played a significant role, which is described in more detail in the Prehistory section (history of the formation of the power elite in Russia and the Urals until 1985). The Glencore corporation and its associated structures were under Jewish control, which may be the answer to the question of how the relationship between the Soviet foreign trade departments and the Glencore corporation was established - through the Jewish diaspora, which played a significant role in the creation of the Comintern and the Soviet foreign intelligence that relied on it .

The global system of the world economy is such that the dominant role in it is played by the largest financial institutions, which, in parallel with the “invisible hand of the market”, and sometimes disguised as it, have a significant influence on production processes, manipulating the price environment and credit resources. One striking example of this is the London Metal Exchange, which occupied a central place in the relationship between Glencore and Russian metallurgical companies. The London Metal Exchange has a five-tier membership system. Members top level this system (Ring) are large US financial corporations, Western Europe and Japan. Members of this level determine the official price of metals on the exchange, which is the benchmark for trading metals throughout the planet. The London Metal Exchange acquired such a significant role thanks to the creation of a global transport and logistics infrastructure and the organization of a system of negotiated transactions with derivative financial instruments that minimize the costs of large buyers and sellers of metals, making trading through the London Exchange more profitable than directly from producer to consumer. This benefit, as well as the relatively closed structure of membership of the London Metal Exchange, created the need for Russian metallurgists to work through intermediaries such as the Reuben brothers and Mark Rich, who were elements of this closed system.

However, Glencore Corporation occupies the lowest level in this hierarchy, being a simple trader on the London Metal Exchange (fifth level). The same status has, for example, a subsidiary of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works. The question naturally arises: was the dependence of Russian metallurgists on the Glencore corporation to a sufficient extent due to the peculiarities of the global economic system, or was this dependence due solely to the criminal and corrupt features of the formation of Russian private capital? There is reason to believe that Glencore Corporation is only part of a system that includes large financial institutions. But Glencore’s connection with these institutions is not advertised, which allows respectable financial institutions avoid responsibility for actions of swindlers like Mark Rich that do not comply with formal business rules, not to mention their Russian partners, the Cherny brothers, together with criminal authorities, corrupt civil servants and intelligence officers. Thus, Glencore's ability to trade on the London Metal Exchange may have gone beyond the rights of an ordinary trader.

An indirect confirmation of these assumptions can be the agreement concluded in 2012 between the Rosneft company, on the one hand, and the Glencore and Vitol corporations, on the other hand, on the supply of oil to these corporations in the amount of $50 billion over 5 years. It is assumed that this contract was concluded as part of servicing a credit line (presumably worth $45 billion) provided to Rosneft by a number of international banks for the purchase of the TNK-BP oil company. In fact, Glencore and Vitol acted as guarantors of the return of funds for a group of banks that issued a loan to Rosneft.

In 2011, Glencore held an IPO on the London Stock Exchange. The company's total capitalization was $59.3 billion. The IPO raised about $10 billion. This became the second largest IPO on the London Stock Exchange. The first place was retained by Rosneft, which raised $10.7 billion in 2006.

As of the beginning of 2012, 58% of Glencore shares belonged to the company's management. The largest shareholders among them were:

Ivan Glasenberg - 15.8%;

- Daniel Francisco Mate – 6%;

Aristotle Mistakidis – 6%;

Thor Peterson - 5.3%;

Alex Bird - 4.6%.

In 2012, Glencore completed the takeover of large mining company Xstrata. As a result, Glencore became one of the world's largest mining companies with a capitalization of about $82 billion. During this takeover, the Qatar Investment Authority (owned by the Qatari government) became one of the largest shareholders of Xstrata, whose actions increased the cost of the transaction for Glencore. As a result of the merger of the two companies, Xstrata shareholders received 47.4% of the shares of the combined company, which means that the Qatar sovereign fund, which owned about 12% of Xstrata shares, became a major shareholder of Glencore.

In the 2000s, the head of the Glencore International representative office in Russia was Yana Robertovna Tikhonova. Information was published that Yana Tikhonova’s husband is an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Denis Aleksandrovich Sugrobov. In 2011, Denis Sugrobov was appointed head of the Main Directorate of Economic Security and Anti-Corruption of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation. In 2014, the main anti-corruption fighter, Denis Sugrobov, was himself suspected of committing corruption crimes and dismissed. In addition, it was reported that the husband of Yana Tikhonova’s sister is Konstantin Anatolyevich Chuychenko, who in 2008 became the head of the Control Directorate of the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation, when Dmitry Medvedev was elected President of the Russian Federation.

According to the Vedomosti newspaper in 2016, the largest shareholders of Glencore were:

- “Qatar Holdings” (investment division of the sovereign fund of Qatar) - 8.99%;

Ivan Glasenberg - 8.42%;

- Daniel Francisco Mate – 3.19%;

Aristotle Mistakidis – 3.17%;

Thor Peterson - 2.8%;

- Alex Bird - 2.45%.

In December 2016, a consortium consisting of Glencore and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund bought a 19.5% stake in Rosneft for €10.2 billion from the Russian state company"Rosneftegaz". As a result, the consortium became the third largest shareholder of Rosneft after Rosneftegaz (50% plus 3 shares) and the British company British Petroleum (19.75%). Russian President Vladimir Putin, in connection with the sale of Rosneft shares, said: “I really hope that the arrival of new investors ... in the management bodies will improve corporate procedures and the transparency of the company.” A version was voiced that the Russian budget deficit was being filled by selling Rosneft shares.

According to the RBC newspaper, as part of the deal, an agreement was concluded that limited liability partnership QHG Trading , created in the UK by structures Glencore with Qatar Holding , within 5 years will be able to annually receive from 4.5 million to 11 million tons of oil produced by Rosneft. Thus, Glencore actually extended the contract concluded with Rosneft in 2012.

Of the 10.2 billion euros spent on the purchase of Rosneft shares, Glencore invested only 300 million euros own funds. The Qatari fund invested 2.5 billion euros. The remaining funds were provided by banks on credit. The main creditor (5.2 billion euros) was the Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo, whose management is allegedly very loyal to the Russian authorities.

One of the questions that arose about the deal was what it meant for the Qatar fund. The fund was created to diversify income from the sale of oil and gas by Qatar, and therefore it is not very logical to use the fund’s funds to purchase shares of an oil company in Russia. The Qatar Foundation is a shareholder of Glencore , which, being an oil trader, is interested in this transaction. But this could hardly serve as a sufficient reason for the participation of the Qatar Fund in the transaction, given that the Qatar Fund is not very friendly towards the company’s management Glencore , which in total controls more shares Glencore than the Qatar fund. It is most likely that in exchange for participation in the deal, the Qatar Fund received consent from Russia to join OPEC’s decision to limit oil production.

In some media, in particular in “ Novaya Gazeta“, a version was voiced that senior government officials and top managers of Rosneft from the entourage of Russian President Vladimir Putin used Glencore and the Qatar Fund in order to obtain Rosneft shares into personal possession. As far as Qatar is concerned, this version is unlikely, given that Qatar is Russia’s political adversary in the Middle East and one of Russia’s main competitors in the gas market. And using an enemy to implement secret schemes means giving him a weapon to blackmail against himself. Another thing is Glencore, which has earned a reputation as a company that responds very flexibly to the non-public needs of government officials, including Russian ones, with whom Glencore has a long history of relationships. According to the Vedomosti newspaper, after the completion of the transaction, Glencore's effective share in Rosneft amounted to 0.54% of the shares, although under the terms of the agreement Glencore was supposed to receive 9.75% of the shares. It is unknown who controls the remaining 9.21% of shares.

Glencore is currently one of the world's largest mining companies, as well as a major oil and grain trader.

Date of information update: 2017.

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This is the largest non-public company on the planet: its turnover in 2006 was $116.5 billion, one and a half times more than that of Gazprom. Her business fits into one simple scheme: she buys raw materials from mining companies and sells them to processors. Details? It’s not so easy to get them: eight out of ten former and current employees of the company (and we interviewed about three dozen) refused to answer our questions. Those who agreed usually spoke anonymously. “The ideology is: the muddier the water, the bigger the fish we will catch. As soon as the water becomes clear, there is nothing we can do,” explains one of them. For decades, this company was not afraid to work in the most backward countries and easily found a common language with dictators rejected by the world. In the early 1990s, during the collapse of the Russian economy, it was the main exporter of Russian aluminum, earning hundreds of percent of profits.

Meet Glencore International, formerly Marc Rich + Co. Having changed owners, broken teeth with young Russian oligarchs and largely lost its influence in Russia, the company has found a way to remain in our market: it participates in the business of large oil and aluminum companies. But how durable is the status quo?

Glencore (an acronym for Global Energy Commodities and Resources) is headquartered in Baar, a town in the tiny Swiss canton of Zug (the entire canton is one-fourth the size of Moscow), formerly one of the poorest in the confederation. It was poverty that forced the cantonal authorities in the 1960s to achieve the right to adopt extremely liberal tax legislation, favorable for international holdings operating outside Switzerland: they do not pay income tax in the canton (they still have to pay federal tax). The EU authorities are still indignant about the “offshore zone” in Zug, but companies registered there enjoy the benefits of both tax-free jurisdiction and the status of a reputable Swiss company, and not a “laundromat” from the Cayman Islands.

It was in Zug that 39-year-old businessman Marc Rich, together with his partner Pincus Green, created the company Marc Rich + Co AG in April 1974. Former employees American trading giant Philipp Brothers decided to go free.

The first decades of Marc Rich + Co are the stuff of an adventure novel (see also “Young Years”). The company traded Iranian oil in circumvention of the American embargo, purchased nickel and gold from Castro’s Cuba, traded with disgraced Libya and with South Africa when it found itself under international sanctions due to apartheid. During the 1973 oil crisis, the partners made millions by running oil through dozens of offshore companies they created. In 1983, federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani (the future mayor of New York) authorized the arrest of Rich and Green, and the charge included 65 counts, including tax evasion of $48 million. The partners fled the United States, Rich took Spanish citizenship, Green took Bolivian citizenship.

Marc Rich turned out to be the only company that decided to supply grain to the USSR, despite the international ban due to the war in Afghanistan. By the time it started to fall apart economic system Soviet Union, Mark Rich was already a long-time and trusted friend of Soviet party officials and leaders of foreign trade associations. Therefore, in the early 1990s, when the water in Russia became quite turbid, Marc Rich easily began to catch very large fish in it.

Ours did not yet understand market trade, the factories did not have money, they asked the banks, but the banks did not take aluminum as collateral. Marc Rich came with money and took aluminum,” recalls businessman Igor Vishnevsky, in an interview with Forbes, the head of the aluminum department in the early 1990s, and from 1998 to 2003 - the entire Moscow representative office of Glencore International. The domestic price of aluminum was 5-10% of its market price in the West, and a significant part of the difference ended up in the accounts of the Swiss company. Nobody dares to name Marc Rich’s rate of profit on operations with Russian raw materials in the early 1990s; they only say that it was measured in hundreds of percent. As soon as in 1992, by decree of President Boris Yeltsin, tolling - processing Russian enterprises foreign customer-supplied raw materials for an agreed fee, Marc Rich adopted this tool for extracting excess profits. A high-ranking manager of one of the Russian raw materials companies, who worked for the Swiss 15 years ago, talks about the practice, common for that time: “They imported alumina, tax-free, paid only VAT on the cost of processing, which could always be lowered by agreeing with the plant. And the officials simply paid rent and transported almost all the aluminum for export.” In the early 1990s, thanks to Russian tolling, a third of all aluminum on the world exchange market, according to the Washington Post, was supplied by Marc Rich + Co.

Although Marc Rich traded a full range of commodities and commodities, its greatest interest has always been oil. Marc Rich had almost no oil contracts with the USSR, and it was more difficult to get into the oil export system than into aluminum processing: it was monopolized by the foreign trade association Soyuznefteexport, created back in the 1920s. To get oil, Marc Rich had to create production joint ventures, supplying equipment and modernizing several oil refineries in Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan. The difference between the internal and external prices of petroleum products more than covered the costs.

The matter, however, was not limited to investments. The technology for concluding lucrative oil contracts was tested by partners back in 1973, when, according to BusinessWeek magazine, they bought a luxurious mansion in the south of France and settled expensive Parisian prostitutes there. Negotiations were held here with Arab sheikhs. The “Method for Sheikhs” was successfully tested on the “first Soviet millionaire” Artem Tarasov. In his memoirs “Millionaire,” he describes how in the late 1980s a suite was rented especially for him in a luxury London hotel, a yacht with an orchestra was rented, how Marc Rich’s people took him to nightclubs, offering to take any dancer into the room - the company pays for all. Tarasov not only signed a contract beneficial for the Swiss company, but also brought it to the then Minister of Grain Industry of the USSR, and soon Marc Rich began bartering Argentine grain for Russian oil products.

The company's Moscow office gradually began to develop: in 1992, about 20 people worked there, and after a year and a half - more than a hundred. “Mostly MGIMO graduates and former foreign traders with their own contracts came,” recalls Mechel General Director Alexey Ivanushkin, who rose to head the ferroalloys department at Marc Rich’s Moscow office. The company willingly hired people with hardware experience: the father of the same Ivanushkin, Gennady, a former consul in Geneva and a retired KGB general, headed the Russian security service of the Swiss company.

From 1989 to 1993, Marc Rich was one of the largest buyers Russian oil, aluminum, copper, zinc, lead, coal, supplier of grain and sugar to the country. Annual trade turnover of the company with countries former USSR amounted, according to various sources, to $3-4 billion. For comparison: the entire Russian export 1993 amounted to $43 billion. But in the same 1993, the company's position began to shake.

How is Glencore (formerly Marc Rich) structured from the inside? The company's founders distributed management between three offices - in Baar (metals and finance), London (oil, petroleum products and sugar) and Rotterdam (grain). But it is not the offices that buy and sell raw materials, earning money for the company, but relatively independent employee traders. Each of them is an independent “combat unit”; he has the right to sign and, within specified limits, manages the company’s funds. As a rule, a trader works with one type of product in one region. In total, it is estimated that the company employs about 300 traders. They do not receive salaries, but bonuses depending on the volume of transactions they carry out. According to one of the company's current employees, who spoke with Forbes on condition of anonymity, the lower limit of a trader's annual income exceeds $1 million. All traders in one direction report to the main trader, working in one of the head offices. There are now about 20-30 main traders in the company, and they all have a stake in the capital. “The policy is this: if you work in a top position, you get a share, if you leave, sell your share to other top positions,” says an employee of the company’s Moscow office.

Traders are the backbone of companies around the world. In 1998-2003, the Moscow office was headed by the “aluminum” trader Igor Vishnevsky, who reported to the executive director and also a specialist in aluminum transactions, Willi Strothotte in Baar. Now the formal head of the Moscow headquarters is lawyer Yana Tikhonova, while neither traders nor financiers are subordinate to her. According to Forbes sources, the office is actually run by oil trader Vladimir Shcherbak, who in turn reports to the head of Glencore's London oil office, Alex Bird.

Marc Rich managed the empire he created until 1993. By that time, the 60-year-old founder of the company was no longer as energetic as 20 years ago, he was painfully going through a divorce from his wife Denise, to whom he paid, according to some sources, $200 million in compensation, and, as the company says, he had lost his former grip. In addition, the very fact that the company was run by a fugitive from American justice blocked the company's access to the most lucrative American consumers of raw materials. It ended in a “velvet revolution”: a group of top traders led by aluminum specialist Willy Strothotte and oilmen Dany Dreyfus and Ari Silverberg convinced Rich to resign.

Rich sold his stake to the company's management (which, according to various estimates, ranged from 75% to 80%). The calculation of the “revolutionaries” turned out to be correct: soon after the resignation of the founder, the company was able to open a fourth head office - in the USA, in Stamford (Connecticut). Rich's entire package was divided among leading traders. Now “no one owned either a controlling or simply a dominant stake,” says Vishnevsky. “First among equals” was the new Executive Director Willy Strothotte. In 1994 the company was renamed Glencore International AG.

Mark Rich himself got into investing, opening new company with the old name, Marc Rich Investments. And in 2001, US President Bill Clinton, a few hours before leaving the White House, pardoned Rich and Green (among 176 people). Clinton later justified himself by saying that the fugitive partners agreed to contribute $200 million to the treasury and such prominent Israeli politicians as the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and the former head of the Mossad intelligence service Shabtai Shavit asked for them. The American press also wrote about the $450,000 that Rich's ex-wife Denise had previously donated to Clinton's presidential library (Denise was later a donor to Hillary Clinton's election campaign). The pardon caused a serious scandal, so Rich and Green chose not to return to the United States, remaining in Europe.

While traders were sharing power, privatization was just unfolding in Russia, and the first financial and industrial groups were formed. Enterprises had owners who began to take over all foreign trade operations for themselves, not wanting to farm them out to third-party traders. “At some point our business simply disappeared,” recalls Alexey Ivanushkin.

“In 1993, we decided to create an enterprise and visited all the largest companies,” Yuri Shleifshtein, former head of the board of directors of the Bratsk Aluminum Plant, recalled in an interview with the Vedomosti newspaper. “At Marc Rich they told us: you only have one option - to trade through us, because we control this market.” But Shleifstein found another opportunity - he agreed with the brothers David and Simon Reuben, owners of a much smaller rival company, Trans World Metals. The Rubens took a share Russian entrepreneurs brothers Lev and Mikhail Chernykh, who helped them seize control of the exports of Russia's second largest aluminum producer, KrAZ, and then the Sayan and Novokuznetsk aluminum smelters. And by the mid-1990s, Glencore became only the second aluminum exporter from Russia, losing leadership to Ruben and Cherny. In 1996, the peak year for aluminum exports from Russia, Glencore exported 750,000 tons of metal, and Trans World more than a million, Vishnevsky recalls.

The new management of Glencore in 1995-1996 radically changed the company's strategy: if previously it was an almost pure trader who acquired industrial assets mainly to gain access to manufactured products, now the company begins to participate in the management of enterprises. In Russia, Glencore is buying up large stakes in metallurgical plants: the Chelyabinsk Iron and Steel Works, the Sredneuralsk Copper Smelter, and Dalpolimetal. The company is trying to compensate for the lost time with significant investments in production, but the idea is not successful.

And in 1998 Russian division Glencore will stop working altogether for the future. After the collapse of financial markets in August, the head office gave the order to sell off Russian assets and focus on collecting debts from suppliers. Not everything was returned: for example, $25 million allocated for the purchase of oil from RAO MES, which became notorious in connection with the reconstruction of the Kremlin and trade with Iraq, disappeared forever. “Not a ton of oil was delivered, all the money was stolen,” complains one former Glencore oil trader. By the early 2000s, Glencore sold all its industrial assets to Russian companies. The company was much better at developing production outside Russia: the Swiss raw materials company Xstrata, which Glencore managers began managing in 1996, in 10 years has become one of the largest mining groups in the world, operating in Australia, Chile, South Africa and a dozen other countries, and became the world's largest exporter of thermal coals, major manufacturer copper, nickel, ferrochrome and zinc.

In 2000, Glencore had a chance to regain its role as the largest exporter of Russian aluminum: its worst competitor, the Trans World group, had by this time been expelled from Russia. Its factories were bought by Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich. Together with Oleg Deripaska they created Russian Aluminum. The newborn aluminum company had practically no sales network of its own abroad, so about 80% of exports had to be carried out through Western traders. “At first it was difficult for them, and in the first two years after the formation of Rusal, Glencore sold quite a large number of their aluminum,” says Vishnevsky and immediately makes a reservation: “The margin, however, was completely different.”

Rusal CEO Alexander Bulygin, in his first interview after his appointment, announced his intention to reduce dependence on traders and fulfilled his promise: last year their share in the company’s sales fell to 15%. But Glencore did not miss its chance: this year, together with SUAL and Rusal, it became one of the co-owners of the united company Russian Aluminum (in exchange for its alumina refineries in Ireland, Italy and Jamaica, as well as an aluminum smelter in Sweden ). Now, with a high probability, it can lay claim to the sale of the mentioned 15% of aluminum produced, which is 600,000 tons of metal per year for approximately $1.7 billion. But, according to sources in the Moscow representative office of the company, Glencore will earn only intermediary interest on this aluminum.

In 2002, Glencore underwent a new and almost imperceptible change of power from the outside: another chief trader, this time coal, Ivan Glasenberg, became the company's executive director. The principle “the one who leaves sells everything” is unshakable, so Willy Strothotte takes the place of chairman of the board of directors - “reigns, but does not rule,” waiting for his colleagues to collect enough money to pay him. The place of head of the London office, traditionally the second person in the company, has recently been taken by oil trader Alex Bird, who for many years oversaw the oil business in Russia. Perhaps it was Bird who convinced Glencore management to decide to participate in the business of a large Russian oil company. Until recently, Glencore only had a stake in the small Nobel Oil, which produces oil in the north of the Komi Republic: the Swiss company was afraid to invade this branch of the Russian economy, which is dangerous for foreign investors. But in 2003, Glencore allocated, according to estimates, at least $300 million to the owner of the Russneft oil company, Mikhail Gutseriev, for the purchase of new fields, receiving in return from 40% to 49% in three producing subsidiaries of the oil company: Varieganneft, Ulyanovskneft " and "Nafta-Ulyanovsk".

For what? The company needed new oil, says one of Forbes' interlocutors at Glencore's Moscow office. The company has lost supplies from YUKOS, the “near-state” oil workers prefer to deal with the trading company Gunvor of Gennady Timchenko, an old acquaintance of President Putin... According to the manager of the Moscow office of Glencore, the Swiss company does not interfere in the management of Russneft, does not claim dividends, and is content with only the fact that all the company’s export oil passes through Glencore (“Russneft” in last years exports about 66% of its oil production, worth about $2.5 billion per year).

The investments turned out to be really risky: in November 2006, the Prosecutor General's Office opened criminal cases on the fact of illegal entrepreneurship against several subsidiaries of NK Russneft, accusing them of non-payment of taxes, and in January 2007 a criminal case appeared on the fact of non-payment of taxes by Russneft itself " As this issue of Forbes was going to press, law enforcement agencies Gutseriev was charged with tax evasion and illegal business. “Gutseriev promised to solve everything,” admitted an employee of Glencore’s Moscow office even before the latest events, “but there are rumors that everything could be sold to some state-owned company.”

It appears that Glencore's role in Russian oil exports is of serious concern to the company's management. The Swiss office of the company, in full accordance with the traditions of corporate secrecy, ignored most of Forbes’ questions, and answered the question about oil. “In 2006, Glencore transported about 34 million tons of oil and petroleum products from Russia,” said company spokeswoman Lottie Grenacher. In addition to Russneft, Glencore trades oil from Tatneft, Bashneft, TNK-BP, “as well as a number of small companies,” she added.

Times have changed. Now, in order to obtain raw materials for export, you need to negotiate not with plant directors. For all its gigantic resources and capabilities, Glencore cannot compare with the country's current main oil trader - Gunvor, a company controlled by President Putin's former colleague Gennady Timchenko, which sells an estimated 70 million to 80 million tons of Russian oil per year for $32-37 billion. (for reference: all Russian exports in 2006 were 248 million tons). “Glencore are foreigners, and from a certain point this ruined their lives,” says the manager of one of the competing companies. “They have exits to Polyanka (the street in Moscow where the main office of Transneft is located - Forbes), but no higher.”

Now Glencore is not a monopoly or even the largest trader of Russian raw materials, as in the early 1990s. For her, this may be a loss, but any other trader would probably be happy to take the place in the Russian commodity market that the “loser” Glencore occupies.

Russian authorities.

Glencore is one of the world's largest traders of commodities, including energy, metals and products Agriculture. It also works with Russian oil, through its subsidiary Ros-GIP. Glencore is a long-time partner of Rosneft, and after this deal it will receive a new long-term contract from it. In addition, this company already has a 25% stake in RussNeft.

The night before, the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, reported to President Vladimir Putin that the deal to privatize the state-owned stake in the company had been completed. The strategic investor was a consortium of Glencore and the Qatar Sovereign Fund (QIA). Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said the deal was worth 10.5 billion euros.

However, Glencore clarified that they will pay 10.2 billion euros for the stake in Rosneft, of which 300 million euros will be in the form of its own shares. The remaining amount under the deal must be secured by the Qatar Fund and banks. As Reuters later reported, the Italian bank Intesa will partially finance the purchase of Rosneft. The entire deal is currently in its final stages and will close in mid-December.

As for the new contract with Rosneft, it will be valid for 5 years and will increase the trader’s portfolio by 220 thousand barrels per day.

Against the backdrop of such reports, Glencore shares began to grow on Thursday morning, TASS reports. In the first hour of morning trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, they rose by more than 3%.

The Guardian newspaper emphasizes that the news of the deal came as a “surprise to the markets”, since the company had recently low prices in raw materials was struggling with a debt load that at one point reached $30 billion. Market expectations were not even affected by the fact that Glencore's chief executive said in December that aggressive cost-cutting efforts had been completed.

Bloomberg also calls this deal “unexpected” and notes that against its background, EU sanctions look “very shabby.” In turn, The Wall Street Journal emphasizes that the deal was a “good” for the Russian President, “whose country is under US and EU sanctions” in connection with the situation in Ukraine.

Glencore is connected to Abramovich, Berezovsky, Deripaska and owns 8.75% of RusAl shares

Glencore International AG (formerly Marc Rich + Co AG) is a trading company, one of the world's largest suppliers of commodities and rare earth materials. In the early 1990s, it was the main seller of Russian oil, aluminum, copper, zinc, lead, coal, as well as a supplier of grain and sugar to the country.

This largest non-public company on the planet (its turnover in 2006 was $116.5 billion) was founded in April 1974 by American entrepreneur Marc Rich and Pincus Green and was initially built on the principles of secrecy, high-risk and aggressive policies.

Mark Rich, having come to Russia, took advantage of his partners’ lack of experience in a free market and received huge profits from transactions.

In 1993, Rich sold a controlling stake in own company its management, after which it was renamed Glencore International and subsequently became the largest commodity trader, remaining the largest non-public company in the world.

Her business fits into one simple scheme: she buys raw materials from mining companies and sells them to processors.

As Forbes recalls, for the first decades, Marc Rich + Co traded Iranian oil, bypassing the American embargo, purchased nickel and gold in Cuba, traded with disgraced Libya and with South Africa, when it found itself under international sanctions due to apartheid.

During the 1973 oil crisis, the partners made millions by running oil through dozens of offshore companies they created.

In 1983, federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani (the future mayor of New York) authorized the arrest of Rich and Green, and the indictment included 65 counts, including tax evasion of $48 million. The partners fled the United States, Rich took Spanish citizenship, Green took Bolivian citizenship.

Marc Rich was the only company that decided to supply grain to the USSR, despite the international ban due to the war in Afghanistan. By the time the economic system of the Soviet Union began to collapse, Mark Rich was already a long-time and trusted friend of Soviet party officials and leaders of foreign trade associations. Therefore, in the early 1990s, Marc Rich easily became the largest player in the new Russian market.

At that time, the domestic price of aluminum in Russia was 5-10% of its market price in the West. Therefore, Marc Rich's profit was measured in hundreds of percent. As soon as in 1992, by decree of President Boris Yeltsin, tolling was allowed - the processing of foreign raw materials by Russian enterprises for an agreed fee, Marc Rich adopted this tool for extracting excess profits. Thanks to Russian tolling, a third of all aluminum on the world exchange market was supplied by Marc Rich + Co.

From 1989 to 1993 annual turnover Marc Rich's trade with the countries of the former USSR amounted to about $4 billion. And all Russian exports at that time amounted to $43 billion.

However, in 1993, Rich sold his stake (from 75% to 80%) to the company's management. Rich's entire package was divided among leading traders. In 1994 the company was renamed Glencore International AG.

In 2001, US President Bill Clinton pardoned Rich and Greene a few hours before leaving the White House. Clinton later explained that the fugitive partners agreed to contribute $200 million to the treasury and the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and the former head of the Mossad intelligence service Shabtai Shavit asked for them.

In 1995, the new management of Glencore changed the company's strategy - now it participated in the management of enterprises, buying up large stakes in Russian metallurgical plants and investing heavily in them.

In 2000, Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska, who created Russian Aluminum, began to conduct part of their exports through Glencore. In 2007, Glencore, together with SUAL and Rusal, became one of the co-owners of the united company Russian Aluminum.

In 2003, Glencore allocated about $300 million to the owner of the RussNeft oil company, Mikhail Gutseriev, to purchase new fields, receiving in return from 40% to 49% in its three producing subsidiaries.

In 2007, UC Rusal was created on the basis of Rusal, Sual and the aluminum assets of Glencore, in which Deripaska received 66%.

Glencore currently owns 8.75% of RusAl shares.

In 2013, after the oil trader Gunvor lost Rosneft's export contracts, Glencore took the place of the leader in the Russian oil market, gaining the right to sell 70% of Rosneft's oil. In June 2013, legendary commodity trader Mark Rich died in Switzerland at the age of 79.

In the spring of 2016, Glencore entered the top ten largest buyers of Russian oil through its subsidiary Ros-GIP Limited, whose oil purchases amounted to $2.9 billion.

“Why should I create an asset if I can buy it from you for less than it cost you to build it?”
- Ivan Glasenberg

I admit, when a week ago I learned that Sberbank announced as a speaker at its metallurgical conference general director Glencore Ivan - or in our opinion Ivan - Glasenberg, I was very surprised. Why? Because for the world of raw materials Glasenberg is the same as, say, Zuckerberg for the world of the Internet, and top global banks compete for the right to invite him to their key events, and here is a fairly passable Sberbank conference in Moscow... But on December 7 everything fell into place: Igor Sechin reported to President Putin about the successful privatization of 19.5% of Rosneft, and Ivan, apparently, came to Moscow to finalize the deal to enter (together with the Qatar Sovereign Fund) into the capital of the largest Russian company.

The name Glencore most likely means nothing to the general Russian public, although this company has very close ties with both the Russian raw material oligarchs and the Soviet nomenklatura bosses. Who became the strategic investor and partner of Igor Sechin’s estate?

Glencore is an acronym that stands for Global Energy Commodity Resources. Here's what they write about themselves on their corporate website:

“We are one of the world's largest diversified and vertically integrated commodity producers, processors and traders.”

Glencore Interest Map

Copper, coal, iron ore, aluminum, zinc, sugar, grain, oil; 160 thousand employees in 50 countries, head office in Swiss Zug, registered on the island of Jersey; business priorities (besides maximizing shareholder profits) - Social responsibility And sustainable development; smiling workers in clean uniforms in corporate photos... It seems that this is a classic resource company with a rather banal strategic focus and a set of hypocritical human values. However, “behind every great fortune lies a crime,” and to understand what Glencore is, we need to go back to 1974 - then the ambitious Jewish trader Marc Rich founded the company Marc Rich + Co AG.

Mark Rich's legacy

Marc Rich (real name Marcel David Reich) is such a controversial figure that, being the founding father of Glencore, he was not even given a tiny section on the company's official website. Rich-Reich's biography is so entertaining that he could easily become the prototype for the villain for the next Bond series. With all the accompanying attributes: citizenship of four countries, friendship with African dictators and Arab sheikhs, beautiful women and Cuban cigars.

Mark Rich: why not Doctor Evil?

Our hero was born in Antwerp, but at the age of 7 he moved with his family to the USA, fleeing the Nazis. He tries to study at New York University, but almost immediately drops out to start working at the reputable trading firm Phillipp Brothers, which at that time is actively developing business in third world countries. Thanks to successful work in Bolivia, Spain, Cuba and the Middle East, Rich quickly becomes a senior trader and, more importantly, acquires a network of important contacts among those to whom “decent people do not shake hands.” He is also at the origins of the creation of the spot oil market - he buys black gold at a fixed price with immediate transfer of ownership, while large oil companies prefer to work under long-term contracts.

Mark's finest hour came on October 17, 1973, when OPEC announced an oil embargo to protest Western support for Israel. Using insider information received from Middle Eastern partners, Rich buys black gold on the eve of the oil crisis, and a few months later sells it at 4 times the price, bringing Philipp Brothers hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. Rightly considering himself the author of the deal of the century, Mark demands a corresponding bonus from his employer, but is refused, and decides to create his own trading company “with blackjack and whores” (literally so - it will become clear why later). Together with partner Pinhus Green, Rich registers a company named after himself in the Swiss village of Baar, and soon lures a significant part of his colleagues and clients there.

And this is where Marc Rich’s talent unfolds in full force: through dozens of front companies and offshore companies, he does business with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the people’s liberation movement in Angola, the ayatollahs in Iran and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. At the same time, our hero is as apolitical as possible: he buys copper from the brown Pinochet, and nickel from the red Castro. Moreover, he manages to sell Iranian oil to Iran's arch-enemy Israel through a system of secret pipelines. By doing business where everyone else is afraid to go, Rich earns billions, but his frenetic activities are beginning to attract more and more attention from the US federal government. For the time being, our hero gets away with a lot (including oil supplies to apartheid-era South Africa, bypassing international sanctions). But Mark eventually crosses the line by continuing to trade with the Iranians after they take 50 American citizens hostage.

In 1983, the young federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, Rudy Giuliani (yes, that same one), brings charges against Marc Rich on 65 counts, including numerous counts of fraud, extortion and corruption, tax evasion and violation of sanctions against Iran, Libya and North Korea. Mark faces up to 300 years in prison.

Rich and Giuliani

Fleeing persecution, Rich flees to Switzerland, where he lives for many years in conditions of strict secrecy, fearing arrest and extradition. Of course, in this situation it is difficult for him to manage his empire (in addition, unsuccessful transactions in an attempt to manipulate the zinc market bring multimillion-dollar losses). Mark gradually retired and in 1994 sold his stake in the company to the remaining partners, who almost immediately rebranded and named the company Glencore.

Interestingly, a few years later, in 2001, US President Bill Clinton, in the last hours (or even minutes) of his presidential term, signed a decree pardoning Marc Rich. Just imagine the scene: on a clear January evening in DC, the most charming president of the most democratic country in the world is sitting in his office with a piece of paper in his hands. After thinking a little and shaking his head, he takes up a Townsend pen and with one stroke absolves the man who spent 15 years on the FBI Most Wanted list from criminal liability. After this, the President stands up, puts on his jacket, turns off the lights and leaves the White House forever.

After some time, it turns out that Mark’s wife made large donations to the US Democratic Party and the Clintons’ foundation itself - and the top political leadership of Israel also very much asked for Rich (evil tongues even said that Mark was an agent of the Mossad and this explained his amazing ability walk on the edge of a knife for so long).

Hillary Clinton and Marc Rich's wife Denise: a sweet couple

Glencore today

But let's return to Glencore. The new management is diligently getting rid of the image of a dishonest trader, while aggressively expanding its business. In 2002, the head of Glencore became the South African Jew Ivan Glasenberg (his Russian name was most likely given to him by his father, a native of Lithuania), who had previously headed the coal division of the trading giant. Ivan begins radical changes: he is going to turn Glencore into a respectable resources company. Glasenberg invites gray-haired Englishmen from Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and British Petroleum to the board of directors (former BP head Tony Hayward is now chairman of the board of directors), hires the London PR agency Finsbury to improve the company's image in the media. In 2011, Glencore became a public company by listing shares on the London and Hong Kong stock exchanges. Top managers turn into millionaires overnight, Glasenberg into a billionaire. The timing of the listing is excellent as commodity prices are exceptionally high. This allows Glencore to place itself, as brokers say, “on the highs.” One of the bankers preparing the deal noted: “The guys at Glencore are not the type to leave crumbs on the table. If they decided to cash out now, it means we are at the peak of the commodity cycle.” And so it happened: since the IPO, the company’s capitalization has only fallen, and now Glencore shares are 25% lower than in 2011.

Glencore office in London (responsible for oil and gas contracts) and headquarters in Bar (canton of Zug, Switzerland). There is also an office in Rotterdam that deals with agricultural contracts

Realizing that the trading business itself is very risky and highly dependent on the will of counterparties, Ivan decides to take the path of vertical integration and begins to acquire mining assets around the world, and is also negotiating a merger with the mining company Xstrata, a large producer of coal, copper, nickel and zinc. In 2013, Glencore acquired Xstrata for $30 billion - the largest deal in the history of the mining and metals industry.

It is interesting that, having become multimillionaires, Glencore traders continue to remain workaholics, not particularly prone to show-offs and parties. Insiders describe corporate culture Glencore as a “wolf-like meritocracy”:

Glencore is still alive and successful only because the seasoned wolves sitting at the top are looked down upon by young hungry wolves in the hope that the old people will sooner or later not be able to withstand the monstrous work rhythm. Working at Glencore, be prepared to receive 500 letters a day, answer calls 24 hours a day and, at the first request, pack your suitcase and go to some hole in Africa or Latin America.

At the same time, the company’s Swiss office is not at all like a trading floor in an investment bank or on the New York Stock Exchange: no one is running around, no one is fussing, no one is trying to shout down a neighbor talking on the phone. Quite the opposite: it is quiet and virtually deserted because most employees spend 80% of their time visiting assets, suppliers and clients. It’s funny that the courtyard of Glencore’s headquarters is decorated with a minimalist sculpture in the form of a pyramid with a ball mounted at the top - the design is actually supposed to symbolize the global nature of the company’s business, but to many it reminds many of the famous Masonic symbol “The All-Seeing Eye.”

Although the new management of the company did everything to distance itself as much as possible from the scandalous name of Mark Rich, his ghost still hovers over Glencore, and the traders he once nurtured do not shy away from effective, but not very ethical and not always legal methods of business business:

According to the BBC (Panorama program), in 2002, Colombian paramilitary forces shot 10 peasants in an attempt to seize land for development coal mine in the town of El Prado. By pure coincidence, it was Glencore's subsidiary Prodeco that had been trying for many years to obtain a coal mining concession in the area.

In 2005, Glencore, among a number of other traders, was accused of paying large kickbacks to Iraqi officials for the right to participate in the oil-for-food program. Moreover, if the Dutch trader Vitol was found guilty and ordered to pay a fine of $17 million, then Glencore again got away with it.

During the 2008 crisis, Glencore, with the support of orthodox Israeli businessman Dan Gertler (who, according to the IMF, has corrupt ties with the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo), acquired one of the largest copper companies in Africa, Katanga Mining, for several hundred million pounds, diluting the stake of minority shareholders in several transactions. 9 times.

In 2009, the Zambian government and independent auditor Grant Thornton accused Glencore of evading taxes by selling copper concentrate from the Mopani mine to one of its trading subsidiaries at reduced prices. Moreover, according to the Government of Zambia and some public organizations, the Mufulira copper smelter has led to terrible air and water pollution, acid rain and a sharp increase in respiratory diseases among more than 5 million people in the region.

Finally, according to Reuters, in 2012 Glencore sold aluminum to the Iranian Aluminum Company (Iralco), a supplier to the Islamic Republic's state nuclear program.

Official representatives of the company, of course, denied everything.

Glencore's effective managers and share price dynamics

At the same time, from a purely operational and financial point of view, Glencore's activities in recent years can hardly be called successful. The sharp fall in commodity prices at the beginning current year collapsed Glencore's capitalization by 5 (!) times. The aggressive purchase of not always high-quality assets in previous years led to an excessive increase in debt, which forced the company to raise capital by issuing shares at an extremely low price and selling non-core assets in an emergency mode. If metal prices had remained at March levels throughout 2016, Glencore could have been on the verge of bankruptcy. But thanks to another round of measures to stimulate the Chinese economy, prices for coal, copper and aluminum have recovered, and Glencore is again cheerful, cheerful and ready for new achievements, which we could see on December 7 this year.

Why did Glencore decide to participate in the privatization of Rosneft? Before we try to answer this question, let's go back to the 90s of the last century and see what connects the Swiss trader with Russia.

Glencore in Russia

In the early 90s, Glencore's (then Marc Rich + Co) business was not going through the best of times.

As a result of Operation Desert Storm, Iraq and Kuwait (the two main counterparties in the Middle East) stopped all cooperation. Mandela came to power in South Africa, and along with international sanctions, excess profits from oil supplies disappeared into oblivion. In Latin America, things were also not going well: local oligarchs became smarter and learned to deal directly with end consumers, gradually abandoning the services of intermediaries. Therefore, the collapse of the Soviet Union became simply manna from heaven for Mark Rich and his comrades.

The Swiss trader already had experience of cooperation with the Soviet Foreign Trade: he supplied grain and sugar to the USSR, bypassing the existing “Afghan” sanctions, and exported non-ferrous metals (primarily aluminum). Journalist Paul Khlebnikov (killed in 2004 by Chechen bandits) assumed that most of these foreign trade transactions were just a cover for the transfer of the CPSU party funds abroad, but could not provide any direct evidence. It is interesting that on the part of the KGB, Alexander Lebedev, an employee of the USSR/Russian Embassy in London, was dealing with issues of preventing the flight of capital abroad at that very time, who a little later founded (it is not clear with what funds) the National Reserve Bank, where Andrei managed to work as deputy chairman in the 90s Leonidovich Kostin. But this, of course, is pure coincidence.

So, the collapsing Soviet system opened up endless possibilities. In 1992, newly elected President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree allowing tolling - the processing of foreign raw materials by Russian enterprises for a fixed fee. Rich did not fail to take advantage of this (it was he, and not Deripaska and the Cherny brothers, who first adopted this method). The scheme worked like this: the trader supplied raw materials (alumina) to aluminum smelters and credited them with money for aluminum production. The plant paid for finished products at a serious discount to the market, and Rich exported aluminum at world prices. No taxes (except for VAT on the processing of raw materials, the cost of which was underestimated by agreement with the directors of the factories) were paid, and officials and “red directors” received their share of export profits directly to accounts in Switzerland.

But most of all, Mark Rich is interested in oil, and that is why his main partner in Russia soon becomes the first Soviet millionaire Artem Tarasov, who somehow miraculously received a license from the Yeltsin government to export fuel oil with the right to keep the proceeds abroad. The methods by which Rich achieved the favor of the Soviet cooperator were not particularly inventive. This is how Tarasov himself describes it in his book “Millionaire”:

Rich’s people, who were involved in the purchase of oil and petroleum products, immediately realized: finally, a wonderful loophole has appeared with which you can trade bypassing the state, and therefore, outside of any limits and reporting! Therefore, they decided to treat me thoroughly so that client number one would not go elsewhere...

Artem Tarasov, comes from an Armenian family. The first legal Soviet millionaire, former MP State Duma. Since the 2000s, he has spent most of his time in London, collecting ties with images of fish.

I was placed in a suite at the prestigious Meridian Hotel in Piccadilly. We rented a yacht with an orchestra and luxurious treats, which sailed along the Thames. We rented several nightclubs, where I was offered to take any dancer into my room: everything had already been paid for by the company...

Of course, this had a great effect on my fragile Soviet psyche, and soon I unconditionally considered Mark Rich the best foreign company of all countries and peoples. For several days I ate very tasty, drank, traveled, fished on a ship, listened to the orchestra playing in my honor, and in the end, of course, I signed the contract.

In addition, having returned to Moscow, I introduced Rich’s representatives to Comrade Chelinsky, the then Minister of the Bread Industry of Russia, and soon the Mark Rich company was already bartering Russian oil products for Argentinean grain, making billions in profits from these operations...

However, the sweet life of Marc Rich + Co in post-Soviet Russia quickly ended. After the privatization deals of 1993, the “red directors” and Soviet entrepreneurs were replaced by Komsomol oligarchs, many of whom worked for a long time as errand boys for the Central Committee bosses (Vekselberg, for example, was responsible for aluminum cables in Tarasov’s cooperative). This new generation turned out to be much smarter - Komsomol members began to put together financial and industrial groups and decided that they did not need intermediaries. Gradually, the Swiss trader is squeezed out of the most delicious deals, and then Mark Rich retires.

But Glencore did not want to simply lose the Russian market. In accordance with the changed strategy, the new management of the company begins to make direct investments in assets of interest to the company in order to guarantee stability export contracts. During 1994–1998, the Swiss (as it is now fashionable to say, “Novgorodians”) entered the capital of a number of metallurgical enterprises in the Urals and Primorye. And most importantly: they are triumphantly returning to the aluminum business. In 1996, at an investor presentation in London, Krazpa Metals NV (50% owned by Glencore) announced that it had become the main marketing partner of the Krasnoyarsk aluminum smelter, replacing trader AIOC, whose director Felix Lvov had been killed shortly before in Moscow. 10 years later, in 2006, Glencore merged its alumina assets with the plants of Vekselberg and Deripaska, thus forming the Rusal company. Today Glencore owns 8.75% of the shares of Russia's largest aluminum company.

Andrey Kostin (VTB), Ivan Glasenberg (Glencore) and Oleg Deripaska (Rusal)

As for the oil industry, Glencore also decided to invest in relatively small companies. The most famous of them was Mikhail Gutseriev’s Russneft, and this investment turned out to be very problematic (in 2007, a criminal case was opened against Russneft; Gutseriev hid in London, but then miraculously solved all the problems).

Until recently, Glencore's share in Russian oil trading had been steadily declining: they were supplanted from the most lucrative contracts by the Gunvor trader of Putin's friend Gennady Timchenko. Industry giants such as Rosneft and Gazprom Neft did not allow Glencore to participate in tenders at all. However, the situation suddenly changed in 2012, when Rosneft was headed by Igor Ivanovich Sechin. Gunvor began to lose tenders, which began to go to foreign traders Vitol, Trafigura and, of course, Glencore. It is not entirely clear whether Gunvor gave up its position in fair competition or reduced its business in Russia as much as possible at the request of the Kremlin, which was tired of numerous journalistic investigations of the Putin-Timchenko connection, but the fact is that Glencore has firmly taken its place.

And here we come to the actual privatization of the Rosneft stake. What follows is the subjective opinion of the author, based, however, on some understanding of the industry.

Firstly, the transaction took place without the slightest leak of information. For all leading business media, be it Bloomberg, Reuters, FT or Vedomosti, this news came as much of a surprise as it did for the general public. Points to Pavel Fedorov (the man who really managed the process).

Secondly, the transaction was actually completed on market conditions, and is beneficial to both Rosneft and the Russian budget.

Thirdly, this is another blow to the unspoken sanctions against Russian companies, whose securities, due to regulatory restrictions, could not be purchased by many investors. Money from the USA and Europe is indeed returning to the Russian market and, most likely, this flow will only intensify in 2017.

Why this Glencore investment? Most likely, this is simply an opportunity to increase market share (+220 thousand barrels per day) and increase marketing profits. Some very rough math. Let's say that Glencore, through various trading tricks, can earn 1% on each barrel of oil, which is about 55 cents at $55 per barrel. 220,000 x $0.5 × 365 = $40 million in profit. At the same time, Glencore gives only $323 million of its own money, that is, we get a return on investment somewhere in the region of 12–13%, which is not bad at all given today’s abnormally low interest rates (and this does not even take into account the potential growth of Rosneft shares in future). In addition, there is also a personal factor here. Glencore, to put it mildly, does not like its colleagues from Trafigura (also from Marc Rich + Co), whose positions in Russia have dramatically strengthened in the last couple of years, and the deal with Rosneft is a kind of triumph for Glasenberg, a victory over Jeremy Weir ( director of Trafigura).

To summarize: Rosneft has received a rather difficult passenger as an investor, but Glencore is ready (at least for now) to work on Sechin’s terms. On the other hand, Glasenberg (among other talents) was once the South African race walking champion, an athletics discipline that requires patience, skillful distribution of forces and, most importantly, strategic planning.

TASS-DOSSIER /Valery Korneev/. On December 7, the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the completion of the deal to privatize the company. 19.5% of the shares were sold to a consortium created by the Qatar Sovereign Fund and Glencore.

Glencore plc is a British-Swiss trading holding company, one of the world's largest companies trading metals, minerals, energy and agricultural products. The headquarters is located in Baar (canton of Zug, Switzerland). The holding is registered in St. Helier (Isle of Jersey, a British crown possession). The company also has representative offices in London (oil and gas division) and Rotterdam (Netherlands, agricultural products). In 2015, Glencore was ranked tenth in Forbes magazine's list of the world's 500 largest companies. 9.25% of the shares are owned by the Qatar Sovereign Fund.

From the history of the company

The holding was founded in 1974 by American entrepreneurs Marc Rich and Pincus Green as Marc Rich + Co. According to media reports, in the 1980s. Bypassing the American embargo, the company traded Iranian oil, purchased gold and nickel in Cuba and supplied grain to the USSR (the ban was introduced after the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan), and also traded with South Africa and Libya during the period of international sanctions against these countries.

In 1983, the federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, Rudolph Giuliani (mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001), authorized the arrest of Marc Rich and Pincus Green on 65 counts, including tax evasion in the amount of $48 million, racketeering and violation of the trade embargo against Iran. After this, the founders of Glencore fled the United States and settled in Switzerland (Rich took Spanish citizenship, Green took Bolivian citizenship). The company was suspected of dealings with Iraq during the reign of Saddam Hussein. Against this background, in 1993-1994. a group of top traders led by Willy Strothotte convinced Marc Rich to resign by buying out his stake (according to various estimates, 51-80%). In 1994, the company changed its name to Glencore International (from the English. Global Energy Commodities and Resources - "Global Energy Commodities and Resources"). On January 20, 2001, a few hours before he left the presidency of the United States, Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich and Pincus Green, but both did not return to America.

In 2007, a deal was closed to merge Glencore's aluminum assets with the assets of the Russian companies SUAL and Russian Aluminum into the United Company RUSAL (its amount was estimated at $10.2 billion). Glencore's share in RUSAL is 8.75%. In 2011, an initial public offering of shares took place on the London and Hong Kong stock exchanges, as a result of which the concern raised $10 billion, taking 7th place in terms of capitalization among global mining companies. In 2012, a deal was carried out to take over the British-Swiss mining company Xstrata for $29.6 billion. Since the late 2000s. until 2015, Glencore's Russian subsidiary, International Grain Company, was largest exporter Russian grain. In 2015, Glencore received 46% of the capital of Russneft; after the IPO (initial public offering) of this oil company in August 2016, Glencore's stake was reduced to 25%.

Indicators

At the end of 2015, the holding operated in more than 50 countries around the world. Glencore's capitalization as of May 2016 is $33.6 billion, the number of employees is 156 thousand 468 people. Net loss at the end of 2015 was $4.96 billion (compared to a profit of $2.3 billion in 2014). Net debts decreased from $30.5 billion in 2014 to $25.9 billion.

Competitors

Glencore's main competitors in the field of oil trading are the Swiss-Dutch concern Vitol Group and the Dutch company Trafigura. Both are among the largest buyers of Russian oil. According to media reports, Rosneft and Trafigura have discussed creating a joint trading business in recent years.

Management

CEO - Ivan Glasenberg (since 2002). Born in 1957 in Johannesburg (South Africa) in the family of businessman Samuel Glasenberg, a Jewish emigrant from Lithuania. Received a Bachelor of Commerce and Accounting from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), a degree in business administration at the University of Southern California (USA). He has been with Glencore since 1984 and has managed offices in Hong Kong and Beijing.

Chairman of the Board of Directors - Tony Hayward (since 2014).

home » Useful » The murky privatization of Rosneft and Glencore. Glencore, which has long been associated with Russian oligarchs, has disclosed details of the purchase of Rosneft shares for €10.2 billion, the deal will be closed in mid-December Glencore Ivan Glasenberg