Glencore: FTSE 100 miner mulls ditching London
Glencore became the latest company to warn it could ditch its London listing today in a move that has been described as a “sucker punch” to UK markets.
Speaking to the media after the miner’s results today, Glencore chief Gary Nagle said that questions had been raised over whether the UK was the right place for Glencore, and whether it needed to move to “get the right valuation”.
“We want to ensure that our securities are traded on the right exchange, where we can get the right valuation,” he said.
“If there’s a better one, and those include the likes of the New York Stock Exchange, we have to consider that.”
The UK market “could face a fresh blow to its prestige” if Glencore moved abroad, warned Laith Khalaf, AJ Bell’s head of investment analysis.
Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, agreed, stating that Glencore had “delivered a sucker punch” to British capital markets.
“It’s a hard reality check – the allure of a US listing is typically pursued by big tech names, so seeing a giant miner looking overseas for a higher price tag and better investor access is a major setback,” he added.
The miner would join a long list of big names to ditch the London Stock Exchange in recent years, including Darktrace, Paddy Power-owner Flutter, and Ashtead.
In total, almost 90 companies were delisted from the bourse in 2024 alone.
This is not the first time rumours have swirled over Glencore leaving London. Last year, activist investor Tribeca began lobbying for Glencore to ditch its listing, claiming that the London Stock Exchange was no longer the “home of mining”.
The push came after FTSE 100 mining giant BHP cancelled its London listing to head to Australia in 2022, though many other miners have decided to stick with the UK.
Glencore was listed in London in May 2011, in the biggest float on the stock exchange. Its stock price has fallen by more than a third since then but it is still the 16th largest company in the UK.
This morning, falling profit and earnings announced in preliminary annual results led the miner’s stock price to fall seven per cent in early trading.