Commodities & Metals

Glencore Places $2.5 Billion in Share Offering

Open pit mine
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Mining and commodity trading giant Glencore announced Wednesday morning that it had placed a total of more than 1.3 billion new ordinary shares in the London-traded company with existing and new institutional shareholders, as well as certain company officials and employees, at 125 pence per share. Gross proceeds totaled £1.6 billion ($2.5 billion). The new shares represented nearly 10% of the company’s outstanding shares prior to the placement.

CEO Ivan Glasenberg added more than 110 million shares to his stake, maintaining his ownership percentage at 8.42%. The company also noted two other insiders who purchased more than 40 million shares apiece to maintain their stakes at the same percentage as before the offering.

There is no mention of the company’s largest shareholder, however. The Qatar sovereign wealth fund, Qatar Holding, held a stake of nearly 9% before Wednesday’s sale. The FT Alphaville blog notes that there may be some regulatory reason that any participation by Qatar Holding is not required to be disclosed, but that seems unlikely.

The company’s $30 billion debt looked manageable when commodity prices were high, but almost as soon as the company’s acquisition of Xstrata closed, those prices started to sink and have never stopped. This sale is part of a plan to raise $10.2 billion in cash and cut the company’s debt by a third by the end of next year. Among other steps announced last week, Glencore is suspending about $2.4 billion dividend payments.

The new shares are expected to begin trading on the London Stock Exchange on September 21. Glencore also has applied to the Hong Kong and Johannesburg exchanges for authorization to trade the newly issued shares.

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