LONDON—Ivan Glasenberg, the longtime chief executive of Glencore PLC, is handing over the reins of the global mining and trading giant he built, saying Friday he would retire in the first half of next year.
The Switzerland-based, London-listed company said it had tapped Gary Nagle, a senior deputy who currently runs the company’s coal industrial assets, as his successor.
Mr. Glasenberg, a 63-year-old South African, joined Glencore in 1984 and has been CEO since 2002. He orchestrated the company’s stock-market flotation in 2011 and shortly after merged it with miner Xstrata, transforming it from a privately held commodities trading business into a publicly listed mining and trading giant.
Two years ago, he started to lay out a timeline for when he might stand down, and more recently said it was getting close to time for him and his senior leadership team to step aside for the next generation of managers.
Mr. Nagle, currently based in Australia, plans to move to Switzerland in the new year to work on the transition to new leadership, Glencore said. He was widely seen as one of the front-runners to succeed Mr. Glasenberg.
