GLEN Glencore Plc

By Alistair MacDonald 

Mining giant Glencore PLC signaled a management reshuffle next year that would pave the way for the retirement of its high-profile chief executive officer, Ivan Glasenberg.

Updating investors on future strategy, Mr. Glasenberg said the company would meet in early 2020 to talk about a change in its "old guard." Once a new layer of management is in place, Mr. Glasenberg said he would be in a position to step aside.

"The old guys will be leaving," he said on a conference call. "I don't want to be an old guy running this company -- and soon as those guys are ready to take over, I will move aside."

Mr. Glasenberg, who joined Glencore in 1984 and has been CEO since 2002, said last year that he would step aside within two to five years. The South Africa-born executive, 62 years old, is one of just a handful of senior staff who were with the company when it was floated on public markets in 2011.

The chief executive merged Glencore, a commodities-trading company, with Xstrata, one of the world's biggest mining companies, in a $29.5 billion deal that created one of the world's largest coal, copper and zinc producers in 2013.

In recent years, the company has replaced the heads of its copper and oil divisions.

Glencore's share price this year has suffered from increased legal and regulatory scrutiny of its businesses, the group's large exposure to coal, weak copper and cobalt prices, and other factors. Glencore said in July 2018 that it had received a subpoena from the U.S. Justice Department, demanding records related to its compliance with American antibribery and money-laundering laws in Congo, Nigeria and Venezuela.

Glencore has also said that it is the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The company has engaged external legal counsel and forensic experts to assist in responding to the DOJ and CFTC investigations, Glencore said in its half-year results in August.

The company on Tuesday said it was well positioned for growth trends such as increased use of electric-powered transport, given its exposure to resources that are used to make their engines and batteries. But Mr. Glasenberg also reiterated the company's commitment to its large coal business, at a time that investors are increasingly turning away from the fuel over environmental concerns.

Mr. Glasenberg, who once led the company's coal division, said that while coal's share of global energy generation will fall, the actual demand for coal will increase as new power stations come on line in Asia.

"Right now coal is there, it generates a lot of [earnings] for the company," he said.

Write to Alistair MacDonald at alistair.macdonald@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 03, 2019 13:33 ET (18:33 GMT)

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