Glencore
Saved by axing dividend $2.4bn
There is absolutely no way that Glencore could have got its refinancing away without the participation of the senior management, who have agreed to take 22 per cent of the new shares to be issued.
These are the same executives who persuaded the market in 2011 that the shares were worth 530p. With the benefit of hindsight, they sold the shares at the top of the commodities cycle. They then bought Xstrata, the main reason the shares were floated, about halfway down.
It is worth bearing in mind that Glencore, before that deal, was mainly a trading operation. Those executives have shown themselves as good at trading in their own shares, then, as they have been historically in commodities