👉 Background: Glencore is the London-listed mining company that was founded back in 1974 in Switzerland. It has become one of the world’s biggest commodity traders and miners with a market cap of more than £33 billion. While it started in Switzerland, it has operations in over 35 countries, including Canada, Colombia, South Africa and of course, Australia too.

👉 What happened: Now, Glencore has transferred $30 billion worth of its mining assets into an Australian subsidiary - we're talking coal, copper and chrome. This transfer means that Glencore now holds $65 billion worth of assets in its Aussie subsidiary (which is nearly double what it had before the restructure).

👉 What else: There are many potential reasons for this asset transfer, but many insiders believe this could be because coal assets supposedly achieve higher valuation multiples in Australia than in London.

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What's the key learning?

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💡Not all assets are valued equally… and location plays a big role. Glencore is doing a valuation arbitrage by shifting where its assets sit (and are reported) to take advantage of how investors value it.

💡In this case, it means that putting coal assets under an Aussie umbrella might increase their perceived worth, especially because Australian investors are very familiar with the role and usefulness of coal.

💡But that ain't all because this move could also re-ignite the on-again-off-again merger with Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto and Glencore flirted with a merger in 2014 and then in 2024 too. But now, with the majority of Glencore’s assets legally based in Australia, this mining mega-merger could be re-visited once again.