Gary Nagle told the Bank of America conference in Barcelona on Tuesday that Glencore (GLEN.L) is a “distant second” to buying Teck Resources‘ (TECKb.TO) coal business.
Teck rejected the Swiss miner and trader’s $22.5 billion bid to merge the two companies, instead separating its copper and coal businesses.
After failing to get shareholder support, the Vancouver-based miner had to reject its initial company separation proposal in April and restructure it for a “simpler and more direct” split.
Glencore would merge and spin off its thermal coal and Teck’s steelmaking coal businesses.
“Doing the full deal is the best offer for both sets of shareholders, it creates the most value – buying their coal business standalone is a distant second in terms of potential benefits,” Nagle said in a conference fireside chat, according to a Bank of America note.
“If that is the route they go down I think it would be remiss of Teck in terms of value for shareholders to not include us in that process,” Nagle said.
Glencore has given Teck shareholders up to $8.2 billion in cash to avoid thermal coal, the most polluting fossil fuel.
At the same conference, Teck CEO Jonathan Price said separation “is the path to create the greatest value” for shareholders and “we haven’t heard anything further from Glencore with respect to changes to (their) proposal.”
Glencore offered more.
