Glencore

The European edition of the Fortune 500, ranking companies by revenue.

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Swiss mining, energy and trading company Glencore has its fingers in many commodity pies—over 60, in fact, with operations in over 35 countries. As a miner, the most significant are copper (worth $18.1 billion in 2023), Zinc ($12.6 billion) and coal ($16.5 billion), though the company also covers gold, silver, cobalt, nickel and aluminum, alongside oil refinery. Glencore doesn’t just produce commodities in enormous quantities; its marketing and trading division, which leans more heavily towards oil, is even larger. The idea is that doing both makes it quicker to adjust to changes in global supply and demand, though it also spreads the risk from the commodities cycle. Glencore is based in Baar, Switzerland, with mining operations mainly in Australia, South America and South Africa.

The corporations on our annual list posted aggregate revenues of $41 trillion for the second year in a row.

The corporations on our annual list of the world’s largest companies delivered a record $41 trillion in aggregate revenues.

G500-2023-Glencore

High energy prices in 2022 powered the Swiss energy and commodity-trading company to its best year ever, with revenues of $256 billion. Its profits of $17.3 billion represented a 248% increase from 2021. 
<ul> 
 	<li>In February 2023, Glencore paid out $7.1 billion to shareholders, including a $1.5 billion stock buyback.</li> 
 	<li>Glencore has been in a months-long takeover attempt of Teck, a company considered the poster child of responsible mining. Teck repeatedly rejected Glencore’s offers. In June 2023, Glencore offered to buy Teck’s coal business, splitting it off from the rest of the latter company.</li> 
 	<li>Over a third of Glencore’s 2022 revenue came from its own coal business, which had strikingly high profit margins of 65% that year, according to its annual report.</li> 
</ul>

The first-ever European edition of the Fortune 500, ranking companies by revenue. 

F500-Europe-Glencore

High and volatile commodity prices propelled the Swiss mining, energy and trading company to a record year in 2022. Revenue reached $256 billion, a 25.6% rise from the previous year, while profits jumped 248.2% to $17.3 billion.   
<ul> 
 	<li data-leveltext="●" data-font="Verdana" data-listid="74" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559684&quot;:-2,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Verdana&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;●&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;multilevel&quot;}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Over a third of Glencore’s revenue came from its own coal business, which hit strikingly high profit margins of 65% in 2022.  </li> 
 	<li data-leveltext="●" data-font="Verdana" data-listid="74" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559684&quot;:-2,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Verdana&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;●&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;multilevel&quot;}" data-aria-posinset="2" data-aria-level="1">In February 2023 the Swiss giant paid out $7.1 billion to its investors, including a $1.5 billion share buyback. It followed this with another $1 billion dividend and $1.2 billion buyback after publishing its half year results in August. This came despite a 50% fall in first half Ebitda compared to 2022, as the coal price normalized.   </li> 
 	<li data-leveltext="●" data-font="Verdana" data-listid="74" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559684&quot;:-2,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Verdana&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;●&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;multilevel&quot;}" data-aria-posinset="3" data-aria-level="1">Glencore has been in a months-long takeover attempt of Teck, a company considered the poster child of responsible mining. Teck repeatedly rejected Glencore’s offers. In June 2023, Glencore offered to buy Teck’s coal business, splitting it off from the rest of the latter company.</li> 
</ul>

Aggregate sales hit $37.8 trillion last year—an increase of 19%, the highest annual growth rate in the list’s history.

G500 2022-23-Glencore

Soaring coal and metal prices powered Swiss mining and trading firm Glencore to a net income of $5 billion in 2021, a notable recovery from its $1.9 billion loss in 2020. Yet the firm's lucrative returns from polluting industries raise questions about how it will reach its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Glencore is contributing to the green-energy transition in other ways—for example, by selling metals and key battery components to manufacturers of EVs and solar panels. But legal troubles have dogged Glencore: In February 2021, it announced plans to pay $1.5 billion in 2022 to settle longstanding multinational bribery probes, and it entered guilty pleas on those matters in the U.S., the U.K., and Brazil in May 2022.

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Total revenue for the world’s biggest companies fell 4.8% to $31.7 trillion this year—the first decline in half a decade.

G500-2021-034-Glencore

It was a landmark year for the Swiss-headquartered mining and trading giant Glencore as CEO Ivan Glasenberg announced he would step down after nearly two decades in the top job. Gary Nagle, who previously headed up the company’s coal operations, took over on July 1, 2021. Despite benefiting from the boom in commodity prices in the second half of 2020, it still took a $1.9 billion annual loss—on the back of a $404 million loss the year prior—largely owing to write-downs in its coal and copper businesses. Meanwhile, Glasenberg said the company—one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of coal—will target net zero by 2050, and would put its coal business into “managed decline.”

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $33.3 trillion in revenues and $2.1 trillion in profits.

G500-2020-017-Glencore

The Swiss-headquartered mining giant had yet another challenging year in 2019, falling one spot as it booked a $404 million loss. That was on the back of weaker commodities prices, particularly for coal, and on $2.8 billion in impairment charges, tied partly to its copper mining operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. Meanwhile, Glencore continues to be dogged by investigations by U.S. and U.K. regulators into allegations of bribery and corruption, which the company denies. In January, Glencore said it was cooperating with a criminal investigation by Swiss authorities into its operations in the DRC. Despite the ongoing regulatory and legal scrutiny, the mining company's shares rebounded solidly in Q2 in line with a jump in copper prices.

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $27.7 trillion in revenues and $1.5 trillion in profits.

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This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $27.6 trillion in revenues and $1.5 trillion in profits.

The world's 500 largest companies generated $31.2 trillion in revenues and $1.7 trillion in profits in 2014. Together, this year's Fortune Global 500 employ 65 million people worldwide and are represented by 36 countries.

Global business is back. After limping through a worldwide financial crisis and economic slowdown, the 500 largest companies ranked by revenues shattered all sorts of performance records in 2013: They racked up combined revenues of $31.1 trillion, up 2.5% from 2012, and profits soared 27% to nearly $2 trillion. China’s 95 companies (up from 89 last year) posted $5.8 trillion in revenues. The U.S. has four fewer companies on the list than last year but remains (for now) the country leader, with 128 corporations on the list—including No. 1 Wal-Mart Stores—reporting $8.6 trillion in revenues. 

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Swiss mining, energy and commodity trading giant Glencore is a global natural resources company with operations around the world in multiple markets. It produces and markets key materials including copper, coal, zinc and oil, playing a vital role in global supply chains.

Glencore

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