Last Updated on November 16, 2025 by Karl Thompson
Glencore is one of the world’s largest commodities companies – it operates in 150 countries extracting natural resources such as iron and copper, but also has interests in coal and oil, as well as numerous agricultural products.
Glencore in 2025: Still “Worst Global Company”?
In 2017, Glencore was already notorious: allegations of corruption, environmental damage, human rights abuses, tax avoidance, and complicity in violent expulsions haunted the company. The question now is whether, nearly a decade on, the situation has improved, worsened—or simply morphed into new controversies.
What’s changed — and what’s stayed the same
1. Legal and regulatory pressures: accountability, but limited transformation
Glencore’s legal entanglements have continued. In 2022, the company pled guilty to multiple charges of bribery and market manipulation across the U.S., U.K., and Brazil, admitting to paying over $100 million in bribes to government officials via intermediaries.
In the U.K., a Glencore subsidiary pleaded guilty to seven counts of bribery and was fined £280 million in 2022. GOV.UK Meanwhile, the Swiss Office of the Attorney General (OAG) closed its criminal investigation in August 2024, issuing a “summary penalty order” and abandoning further prosecution. The Dutch authorities also ended their probe.
While these are technically “resolutions,” critics argue they amount to paying fines rather than structural change. The investigations closing doesn’t mean the underlying corporate culture has shifted.
Notably, in 2025 the UK’s Financial Reporting Council (FRC) opened an investigation into eight years (2013–2020) of Deloitte’s audits of Glencore and its UK subsidiary. The FRC is examining whether Deloitte sufficiently addressed the risk of regulatory non-compliance in its audits. The Guardian+1 This implies that accountability isn’t only for Glencore: it may also reach those who audited it.
2. Strategy, structure, and financial performance
Glencore has adjusted strategy several times. Initially projected to spin off its coal assets into a separate listed entity by 2025, the company reversed that plan in 2024 after significant investor pushback: over 95% of shareholders favored retaining coal operations. The coal and steelmaking operations (including the large acquisition of Teck Resources’ coal business) have now been reorganized under a single Australian-managed unit, to simplify oversight.
In 2024, Glencore announced a $2.2 billion return to shareholders via share buybacks and dividends, even as earnings fell. Reuters But that came amid a 16% drop in adjusted EBITDA (from $17.1 b to $14.36 b) and a sharp increase in net debt to $11.2 b (from $4.9 b) — largely driven by capital expenditure and the EVR acquisition. Reuters In mid-2025, H1 production reported a 5% uplift in “CuEq” output year-on-year, boosted by coal volumes from EVR. However, Glencore’s own-sourced copper output fell 26% due to lower ore grades, recoveries, and mining sequencing disruption. glencore.com
Markets and analysts are increasingly skeptical. Investors are publicly questioning Glencore’s strategy as the anticipated “copper bonanza” fails to materialize; copper production is forecast to decline for a fourth straight year. Bloomberg Simultaneously, there is speculation about a merger with Rio Tinto (or a re-merger-then-split approach) as a way to create scale, then carve the carbon-heavy and transition-metal divisions. Breakingviews
On another front, the company considered relocating its stock listing from London to a U.S. exchange but ultimately decided against it in August 2025, citing that the move would not deliver additional value to shareholders.
3. Continued environmental & human rights controversies
Glencore’s reputational risks remain strongly centered in its operations in Colombia, Peru, DRC, and more recently in Australia.
- In Colombia and Peru, new investigation reports (late 2023) documented ongoing environmental destruction, air and water pollution, failures to consult Indigenous communities, and restricted land access — despite Glencore’s public commitments.
- In Australia, controversy erupted in 2023 when Glencore proposed injecting up to 110,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year into groundwater in the Great Artesian Basin. Critics—including hydrogeologists and local communities—warned this could acidify water, dissolve rock, and release heavy metals. Wikipedia
- In Colombia, the Cerrejón mine (co-owned by Glencore) has a long track record of forced relocations, loss of land, and local discontent over water access and air pollution.
- In the DRC, many of the same issues flagged in 2017 persist, especially through the Kamoto Copper Company (KCC) and other joint ventures: acid waste, allegations of child labor, opaque dealings, and accusations of under-compensating local communities.
- The Mutanda Mine, previously shuttered, is part of ongoing debate about whether it should resume operations.
These operations underline that even if some legal fronts are “resolved,” the material environmental and social harms continue.
4. Emerging signals: recycling, partnerships, and greenwashing concerns
Glencore is attempting to reposition itself in the emerging space of battery metals, recycling, and circular economy. In October 2025, its division signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with U.S. recycler Metallium for handling end-of-life electronics and lithium-ion batteries. This effort fits into broader pressure to shift from just extraction to resource stewardship.
However, critics are likely to see this as a greenwashing move unless accompanied by transformation in core business. After all, Glencore remains a major coal producer — nearly 100 million metric tons in 2024 — and reversed earlier promises to exit coal. Also, its financing deals have drawn criticism: in 2025, HSBC came under fire for helping Glencore raise $1 b despite its own climate pledges to cease supporting coal expansion.
Should we still call Glencore the “Worst Global Company”?
That label is more rhetorical than scientific, but many of the core criticisms from 2017 remain valid — only now they are more structurally entrenched, and in some respects amplified by scale and financial sophistication. Here’s a quick verdict:
Arguments supporting continuation of that label:
- The legacy of corruption has not been fully uprooted. Legal “closures” are often fines and settlements, not transformations of governance culture.
- Environmental and social harms at the operational level remain pervasive across continents, with particularly deep impacts in resource-poor countries (e.g. DRC, Colombia, Peru).
- The company’s business remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels (coal) and problematic mining assets, despite pledges to engage with transition metals.
- Its ability to return large payouts to shareholders while burdened with debt and declining core production signals prioritisation of capital markets optics over sustainable operations.
- Partnerships for recycling and so on are promising but appear marginal relative to the scale of extraction and unresolved harms — they risk being more symbolic than structural.
Arguments for nuance and possible improvements:
- Glencore is under constant regulatory and investor scrutiny, suggesting external pressures could drive more change forward.
- Moves such as audit investigations into Deloitte indicate scrutiny is expanding to auditors and gatekeepers, not just the company.
- Strategic reorganization (e.g. coal consolidation, MOU for recycling) shows adaptive behaviour — though whether that translates into real change is yet to materialize.
- Even amidst commodity downturns, the company is investing and trying to maintain cash flows — the business is showing signs of survival and adaptation rather than collapse.
In short: calling Glencore the “worst global company” remains defensible, but to make the case stronger today requires more than pointing to corruption and environmental damage. It needs demonstrating a lack of genuine reform, persistent harm, and dominance of capital rewards over social responsibility.
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