Secretive Commodities Trading Leader Glencore (GLEN.L)

Seldom people had ever heard of a trading group called Glencore prior to its IPO. In fact, Glencore International AG (GLEN.L) is a powerful commodities trading leader headquartered in Switzerland. It was a privately-held and secretive commodities trading group in the past 37 years. The group currently employs no less than 55000 people all over the world across 40 countries.

Commodities Trading Leader

If you do not really know what is now the true leader for commodities trading, here is how we can tell you. Based on updated information from Reuters, Glencore Group (GLEN.L) should now be the largest diversified commodities trading leader in our planet. In fact, it is much more than just a commodities trading leader, it is also a super owner of many publicly-listed commodities companies including 34% stakes in Xstrata Group, the world's fourth largest copper miner. Glencore Group (GLEN.L) does not drill oil on its own, but it governs approximately 3% total supply of daily oil consumption for the whole world. This does make this commodities trading leader more secretive to the general public.

Despite this vital role in worldwide commodities supply chain, until recently the Switzerland-based Glencore Group (GLEN.L) stayed secretive. In May 2011, it launched an Initial Public Offering (IPO) to raise around $10 billion totally in London and Hong Kong. Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Citigroup were joint global coordinators for this IPO. There were quite many reputable cornerstone investors for this IPO, such as BlackRock Fund, Bain Capital, Abu Dhabi state-owned Aabar, Credit Suisse, UBS, Fidelity Investment Fund, Chinese Zijin Mining as well as GIC (Singapore sovereign fund).

With such kind of strong support, this IPO did create a considerable amount of wealth for its original owners as each company director would be worth around $167 million dollars. Ivan Glasenberg, CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of Glencore Group (GLEN.L), had likely been the biggest gainer because he currently holds almost 16% shares of this secretive commodities trading leader, valuing around $9.5 billion dollars.

Listing on the above stock exchanges also implied that the whole Glencore Group (GLEN.L) could become scrutinized by Europe and Asia regulators, investors or even bankers. In June 2011, just a couple of days after Glencore's successful IPO on London and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges, EIB (European Investment Bank) announced to halt all new bank loans to Glencore due to concerns about corporate governance standard of this commodities trading leader. Mopani Copper Mining, a secretive Glencore's subsidiary in Zambia, had been accused of causing heavy pollution and also tax evasion. Though Glencore Group (GLEN.L) had then denied such allegations, EIB (European Investment Bank) still determined to keep worrying about corporate governance standard of the entire Glencore Group and has halted all new bank loans to its headquarter and also its subsidiaries. It is believed that Glencore's share price would be hardly predictable in the foreseeable future, owing to an increased scrutiny after public listing of this secretive commodities trading leader.

Investing in Commodities Trading

Investing in commodities trading can be highly risky but also can gain great investment returns. If you really concern about whether you should invest in Glencore Group (GLEN.L), please come to read this: Stock Analysis of GLEN.L (Glencore Group), the Leading Commodity Trader (for full details of our investment analysis). From above website, you can also explore more about investment risks associated with this secretive commodities trading leader as well as learn more about investing in worldwide commodities market.