When Gary Nagle became chief executive of Glencore two years ago, the world was still gripped by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Swiss mining company had just signed a deal to expand its ownership of a giant thermal coal mine in Colombia, Cerrejón.
Nagle, who was 46 at the time, had previously run Glencore’s coal business, and the Cerrejón deal negotiated by his predecessor Ivan Glasenberg proved to be one of the most profitable mining deals of all time. Coal prices soared after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and in 2022 coal accounted for more than half of Glencore’s record profits.
But now Nagle, who cut his teeth in coal mining, may be about to do something that would have been unthinkable when he took office: spin off Glencore’s coal business. That would leave behind a sizeable metals mining, processing and trading business, with nickel, cobalt and copper mines stretching from Canada to the Congo.