‘Glencore isn’t the next Enron’

After a tumultuous week - and 2015 - for Zug-based company Glencore, is there cause for concern in Switzerland, where the commodities business represents 4% of the GDP? Led by CEO Ivan Glasenberg, who until recently was generally regarded as a luminary for reading financial and commodities markets, Glencore has suffered unprecedented losses this year, losing some 70% of its market value since January. On Monday share prices dropped 29% following a report assessing the company’s mining challenges, before rebounding on Tuesday. One of Switzerland’s biggest companies by revenue, Glencore gets 28% of its earnings  from mining copper, which has fallen 18% this year. This had prompted it to suspend production at Katanga Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Giacomo Luciani, professor at Geneva’s Graduate Institute, warned that while Glencore’s market rally represents the latest sign of the effects of slow growth in the Chinese economy on commodities, it was ...