Glencore faces flood of investor lawsuits following bribery charges

LONDON - Glencore faces a raft of class-action-style lawsuits from investment and pension funds in Britain, months after the mining giant pleaded guilty to market manipulation and bribery.

Mubadala Investment Company and International Petroleum Investment Company are among more than a dozen funds that have filed claims at a London court against Glencore and a group of its executives in recent weeks, according to court records.

While there is no public record of what the claimants allege, people familiar with the matter said it was linked to the more than US$1 billion (S$1.4 billion) fine that Glencore paid in May. The firm admitted to bribery and market manipulation stretching over a decade. Glencore said at the time that the company had changed since the wrongdoing.

Funds linked to Phoenix Group, Standard Life and HSBC filed claims against the mining giant, while another suit named abrdn, Norges Bank and the Kuwait Investment Office as claimants.

Glencore in May pleaded guilty to a range of charges, from bribery and corruption in South America and Africa to price manipulation in US fuel oil markets, resolving long-running investigations against the company in the United States, Britain and Brazil.

It agreed to pay about US$1.1 billion to the US and Brazilian authorities, with the total amount of the fine in Britain to be set in a sentencing hearing in November. Glencore made a US$410 million provision for the British fine in the 2021 accounts of its British subsidiary, Glencore Energy UK.

"This type of behaviour has no place in Glencore," Glencore's current chief executive Gary Nagle said at the time of the settlement. "We have taken significant action towards building and implementing a world-class ethics and compliance programme to ensure that our core controls are entrenched and effective in every corner of our business." BLOOMBERG