Glencore says the quiet part out loud

In Europe, investors seem a little bit more focused on ESG [environmental, social and governance], and it seems to be the ESG desk that makes more decisions—and returns are sometimes put second or third in the list. That’s a concern for us.

Gary Nagle, Glencore CEO

You might reasonably have believed that a mining company recently convicted of bribery and funding paramilitaries, discovered discharging acid into a river and processing copper hand-mined by children and by underpaid workers, and fined for waste disposal without a permit would want to clean its image—especially after $1.5 billion in corruption fines announced last year. You would be mistaken: the FT reports that Gary Nagle, CEO at Glencore, framed European investors’ ESG concerns as problematic while discussing a $23bn bid to acquire further coal assets at a mining dinner last Thursday.