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Glencore's flotation will value the stake belonging to Glencore chief executive Ivan Glasenburg (above) at $10bn, with four other executives becoming overnight billionaires. The Financial Times reports that Aabar, a unit of Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Company, will invest $850m in Glencore as a cornerstone investor, with at least another $150m to be bought during the bookbuilding process. As such, the emirate is set to become Glencore’s largest shareholder, after the company’s employees.
UNCTAD is one of the lead agencies pursuing the development of the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investments, which have come under fire from a wide range of civil society groups for facilitating land grabs. The Ethiopian government's policy of offering large-scale land concessions to foreign agribusiness investors is mired in international controversy and local opposition (Above: UNCTAD Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi)
Sai Karuturi at his cut flower operation in Ethiopia. Karuturi's share price has plummeted over the past 6 months.
“We are looking at rice farmlands as it is the main food crop,” said Renatto Barbieri, Galtere's portfolio manager. “Have you heard of anyone dying because of not eating sugar or corn or soybeans?”
"This is green gold," says Sai Karuturi, CEO of Karuturi Global, on a visit to his 300,000 ha farmland concession in Gambela Province, Ethiopia.
One of the main investors in Mtanga Farms is Lion's Head Global Partners (LGHP). In October 2010, the Rockefeller Foundation announced that it was supporting LHGP in collaboration with the Global Impact Investing Network to develop a set of Generally Accepted Practices and Principles for agro-enterprise investments in sub-Saharan Africa.
The famous Sugar Loaf Mountain in the background in Rio de Janeiro. Abu Dhabi's Mubadala is studying plans to invest in the emerging economy (Photo: Reuters/Ricardo Moraes).
"Richer countries that are investing in land abroad for food cultivation, such as in Africa, should therefore also work to educate the poor about agricultural methods, so that food production can be increased to a level at which poor people can produce enough for investing countries as well as themselves,” said Bob Geldof at the Gulf Intelligence Food Security Forum in Abu Dhabi.
A member of the Korea Dairy & Farmers Association pours a bucket of milk on his head in Yeouido Park, Seoul, South Korea, June 2008. Farmers were protesting for measures to protect them from rising production costs on soaring raw materials prices. (Photo: Yonhap)
