Xstrata
| Xstrata plc
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Corporation |
| ISIN | GB0031411001 |
| founding | 1926 (as Südelektra AG) |
| Seat |
Zug , Switzerland (headquarters) London , Great Britain (as a branch) |
| management |
|
| Number of employees | 37,698 (2007) |
| sales | 31,618,000,000 USD (2012) |
| Branch | Mining |
| Website | [1] |
Xstrata plc was an international Swiss mining company that was registered as a public limited company in London, but had its headquarters in Zug . The company was listed on both the London and Swiss stock exchanges . According to its own information, Xstrata directly and indirectly employed around 70,000 people and in 2012 generated sales of around 31.6 billion US dollars. The main shareholder of Xstrata, with a stake of 34.38%, was Glencore , which is active in raw materials trading and which Xstrata has now fully taken over.
history
Xstrata was founded as Südelektra AG in 1926 and initially worked on infrastructure and electricity projects in Latin America. Through a large number of takeovers, the company expanded into a broadly diversified mining company. In 1999 the Zug-based Südelektra AG changed its name to Xstrata AG. On the occasion of the IPO in 2002, the group of companies reorganized. The previous Xstrata AG was dissolved as a stock corporation under Swiss law and became a public company as Xstrata plc. The headquarters remained in Zug.
Xstrata has since grown into one of the top-selling companies in Switzerland, not least thanks to several large takeovers and the raw materials boom, and operates companies and projects in a total of 18 countries. Xstrata's only location in Germany is a zinc smelter in Nordenham .
On February 7, 2012 it was announced that Xstrata had reached an agreement on a merger with Glencore , which is domiciled in Baar . Some larger shareholders have announced resistance and the approval of the competition authorities is still pending. After a detailed examination, the European Commission announced on November 22, 2012 in Brussels that the intended merger of the two groups to form Glencore Xstrata International plc had been approved. The only condition mentioned was the termination of the cooperation between Glencore and the zinc manufacturer Nyrstar . In April 2013, the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, as the regulator, also gave its approval to the merger on the condition that Glencore will sell a copper mine in Peru and deliver certain quantities of copper, zinc and lead to Chinese customers by 2020.
Business areas
The main area of activity of the group of companies includes the extraction of copper , coal , nickel , vanadium and zinc . In addition, Xstrata also promotes platinum , gold , cobalt , lead and silver and is heavily involved in recycling . Xstrata is active in 18 countries on six continents. The main shareholder Glencore takes over the marketing rights for Xstrata for nickel, cobalt, copper and vanadium, among others.
criticism
Xstrata is regularly at the forefront in the sustainability reports of a Swiss university of applied sciences ( Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz ), whereby the head of research emphasizes that the report does not state whether a company is operating sustainably or socially, but only measures how well the company reports on it. Xstrata is repeatedly criticized for dealing with its miners , especially in emerging countries . In 2002, for example, the South African subsidiary “Vantech” came under severe criticism when it became known that within two years 83 employees - according to the union even 120, around a quarter of the entire workforce - at the location in the Mpumalanga province , of whom the most had bronchitis or severe asthma. According to a study published in 2001 by the South African Mining Ministry, the reason for the illness was that they had been exposed to the poisonous mine ore vanadium pentoxide . According to the ministry report, the vanadium pentoxide dust in some workplaces had sometimes exceeded the permissible limit by 31 times. Another report by the ministry, published in 2002, criticized the fact that Vantech management ignored the health risks and exposed employees to “unacceptably high concentrations of chemical substances for years” . Nevertheless, according to the report, the management cannot be accused of a clear violation of the occupational safety and health laws. However, it recommended a number of measures that the company should take to keep the health risk as low as possible.
In 2012, there were major protests by indigenous Quechua smallholders in Peru , accusing the company of causing massive environmental pollution while operating the Tintaya copper mine ( Espinar province , Cusco region ). Two people died and the government declared a state of emergency in the affected province. Among those arrested was the mayor of Espinar, Óscar Mollohuanca, who had recently tried in Switzerland to negotiate a solution to the conflict with Xstrata. Congresswoman Verónika Mendoza - later presidential candidate of the left-ecological party alliance Frente Amplio - then left the governing faction Gana Perú and the Peruvian Nationalist Party of President Ollanta Humala on June 4, 2012 in protest .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Entry in the commercial register of the Canton of Zug ( Memento from August 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ a b page no longer available , search in web archives: Annual Report 2012
- ^ Location Nordenham ( memento of October 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) on the Xstrata website - as of July 19, 2011
- ↑ Glencore and Xstrata create new commodity giants. Reuters , February 7, 2012, accessed February 7, 2012
- ↑ RP-Online from, accessed on November 22, 2012
- ↑ The mega-merger of Glencore and Xstrata clears the last hurdle. Tages-Anzeiger from April 16, 2013.
- ↑ Tobias Bayer: Glencore machine with billions. ( Memento from February 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Financial Times Deutschland , February 9, 2011
- ↑ Michael Soukup: Zuger Saubermann builds CO2 extractors. ( Memento of July 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), SonntagsZeitung , April 3, 2011, p. 58, on inrate.com
- ↑ Sustainable mining by multinationals? A dossier on the Swiss company Xstrata. ( Memento from July 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.4 MB) AG Mining MultiWatch, August 2010
- ↑ Peru's smallholders rehearse the uprising , Spiegel Online from June 4, 2012
- ↑ ElComercio.pe: congresista Verónika Mendoza Renuncio a bancada de Gana Perú. Legisladora por Cusco se opuso a estado de emergencia en Espinar por protestas antimineras y criticó gestiones del Ejecutivo . El Comercio, June 4th 2012.