Financing Glencore: European banks still backing coal expansion

Reports

21 May 2025

Glencore, a top global coal producer, is expanding its thermal and metallurgical coal portfolio, at odds with climate imperatives. While European banks were among the first to adopt policies to restrict coal financing globally, some of them keep playing a critical role in supporting Glencore’s coal expansion. This report investigates how European banks’ policy loopholes enable Glencore to continue securing substantial funds.

Key findings:

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European banks have participated in Glencore bond issuances between January 2024 and April 2025.
  • Glencore continues to scale up its coal capacity despite being one of the world’s largest coal exporters and the world’s second largest coal mining company. This scale up includes a total of 17 thermal and metallurgical (“met”) coal mining expansions in Australia, South Africa, Canada, Russia, and Kazakhstan. These expansion plans are at odds with climate imperatives and International Energy Agency (IEA) climate scenarios that all project a decline in global coal production – for both thermal and met coal.
  • Twenty major banks have participated in 12 Glencore bond issuances totalling US$8 billion between January 2024 and April 2025. Almost half of these banks are European: Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, ING, Santander, BBVA, UBS, Standard Chartered, HSBC and Barclays.
  • These bonds, issued by Glencore’s financial subsidiaries, are intended for general corporate purposes. As such, the proceeds can be used to fund any of the company’s activities, including potential coal expansion projects.
  • Major loopholes in the coal policies of European banks explain why they can continue financing Glencore. These include inadequate exclusion thresholds, restrictions only for new customers, restrictions only applying in the future, and even tailor-made exemptions. Furthermore, only two of the European banks listed – ING and HSBC – have policy restrictions regarding met coal, but as these only cover project-level financing they are highly insufficient.

Reclaim Finance is calling on all the European banks to introduce stronger policies to exclude finance for all coal developers, ensuring they do not allow any financing for coal developers at the corporate level – regardless of whether they develop thermal or met coal – without any exceptions.