Why is Gary Nagle, Glencore CEO for the past five years, so keen on mergers & acquisitions (M&A)? The company already has ample production growth in copper, the metal that increasingly matters most to miners. Its target of 1.6Mt a year by 2035 represents a near-doubling on last year’s output; if achieved, it would rank Glencore among the world’s largest producers of the red metal.
The answer may lie with Nagle’s predecessor, and Glencore’s single biggest shareholder, Ivan Glasenberg. Glasenberg, who owns 10.2% (worth about $3.7bn) of the company, could be seeking an exit, having been the executive who took the firm public in 2011.
It would be dangerous to overstate Glasenberg’s role as puppet master, not least because he has held rather than sold Glencore shares, and in April last year bought shares for the first time in a decade. Still, as a veteran of the commodity cycle with a trader’s instincts, Glasenberg will know these are heady days for copper: in the six months to June, Glencore’s copper business reported ebitda of more than $3bn, up from $1.1bn a year earlier.
Against this backdrop, speculation linking Glencore to a large-scale deal has been intense and unrelenting. The latest is that Nagle is keen to revive merger talks with Rio Tinto after discussions with the Australian miner broke down in February. A prospective secondary listing on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), unveiled by Glencore in August, will only keep that speculation alive. “We believe Rio merger talks could be revived at some stage, potentially once both companies have made progress on divestments,” says Liam Fitzpatrick, an analyst at Deutsche Bank.
There are three reasons Glencore sees value in an ASX listing. First, ASX-listed mining shares trade at a substantial premium to the FTSE. Second, there is a lack of copper options in the Australian market, according to Fitzpatrick. Third, an Australian listing would give Glencore acquisition currency for deals in the region. Nagle says: “If we were going to buy something for stock, for shares, in Australia, that’s where you’d use Australian securities to do that. Australia is a big mining geography, and opportunities do come up there — we built most of our Australian business through M&A over 25 years.”
Yet talk of Rio Tinto may still be premature. Australian investors have balked at the idea. “The company got a pretty clear message when talks were on that they shouldn’t go there,” Michael Bell of Solaris Investment Management, a Rio shareholder, told Reuters in June.
One reason the Rio Tinto merger foundered was a disparity in valuation, which is why the ASX listing looks like a canny move: a higher rating could narrow that gap. Glencore has also done itself a favour by performing strongly this year. A baseline target of 1Mt of copper output by 2028 could now be reached six months early, following faster-than-forecast progress at Alumbrera, a brownfield project in Argentina.
There has also been a marked recovery in Glencore’s long-beleaguered African copper business, which reported a two-thirds increase in production. Its ebitda topped $1bn, up from $100m in the same half of 2025.
The improved copper price has also brought fresh momentum to commercial discussions with Orion Critical Mineral Consortium, the US government-backed private equity investor that signed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding to buy 40% of Glencore’s Mutanda and Kamoto Copper businesses. The assets were valued last year at $9bn on a 100% basis, but the market has since moved. “The number isn’t locked in,” says Nagle. “One has to look at all the elements that feed into this: the due diligence, the market, the outlook.”
Cash flow also looks robust for the second half. Glencore had sufficient confidence to top up the $2bn dividend announced in February by $1.5bn, split between a $1bn special cash payment and a $500m share buyback. Behind that decision is a $5.9bn working capital build owing to higher prices, some of which should be released, implying a strong free cash flow tailwind.
“With Glencore, free cash flow directly feeds into capital returns, and capital returns tend to be a positive for its shares,” says New York bank Jefferies. Fitzpatrick adds: “We continue to see a compelling bottom-up story for Glencore: near-term progress on divestments should lead to higher shareholder returns.”
That prospect may yet turn the heads of Australian investors. Bank of America analyst Jason Fairclough believes sentiment could shift as Australians become more familiar with Glencore’s business model. “In turn, this might help set the scene for further large-cap consolidation in the space,” he says. Game on.