Glasenberg is the chief executive officer of Glencore, the world's biggest commodities trader. The Baar, Switzerland-based company began trading in London in 2011 and acquired competing mine operator Xstrata for $29 billion in 2013. Glencore employs about 150,000 people and had assets of $129 billion in 2018.
Ivan Glasenberg's net worth of $4.31B can buy ...
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The majority of Glasenberg's fortune is derived from a 9% stake in Glencore, the world's biggest commodities trader. He holds the shares directly, according to its 2018 annual report.
Glencore sold shares in an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange in May 2011, and merged with Xstrata in May 2013.
The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of dividends, market performance, insider transactions, taxes and charitable contributions.
Charles Watenphul, a spokesman for Glencore, declined to comment on the net wealth calculation.
Ivan Glasenberg was born on Jan. 7, 1957, in Guateng, South Africa, to Samuel and Blanche Glasenberg. His father owned a luggage manufacturing business and raised the family in the Johannesburg suburb of Illovo. Ivan excelled at sports in high school and, in his early 20s, was a national champion in race-walking for South Africa and Israel, and came close to competing in the 1984 Summer Olympics.
After high school, he enrolled at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He became interested in commodities after observing a trader in South Africa sell candle wax from South America to a buyer in Japan. After earning his bachelor's degree in accounting, he moved to the U.S. to attend business school at the University of Southern California. Soon after graduating from business school, he took at job in Johannesburg at Marc Rich and Co., a commodity-trading firm.
He moved to Australia -- where he became a citizen -- to trade coal. After stints in Hong Kong and Beijing, he moved to the company's headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, to head the coal department. In 2002, he was appointed chief executive officer of the company, which had changed its name to Glencore.
As head of one of the world's largest trading and mining companies, Glasenberg manages to avoid publicity and gave few interviews. His obscurity lessened in April 2011, when Glencore announced plans for an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange. The company raised $10 billion in the May 2011 IPO, generating enough demand that the company said it had covered the offering in one day. Nine months later, Glencore made an all-stock bid for Switzerland-based miner Xstrata, a move that created the world's fourth-largest mining company.
The deal was endangered in June 2012, when Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, which owned 11 percent of Xstrata, objected suggesting that the offer was too low. Three months later, Glasenberg boosted his bid by almost 10 percent, also proposing that he -- and not Xstrata's CEO Mick Davis -- would lead the combined company. The offer appeased Xstrata's board, and the merger completed on May 2, 2013, with the formation of Glencore Xstrata.
Glasenberg, who is married and has two children, lives in Zurich, Switzerland.