Two giants of the mining world, Glencore and Rio Tinto, said on Friday that they had revived talks to merge, as commodities producers around the world seek to combine amid growing demand for copper and other metals.
The companies said separately that they were weighing a potential transaction, including an all-stock combination of their businesses. The most likely outcome is that Rio Tinto, whose market capitalization is roughly twice as big as Glencore’s, would acquire its smaller rival.
The two companies, which are both listed on the London Stock Exchange, would have a combined market value of roughly 150 billion pounds, or $201 billion.
Glencore and Rio Tinto cautioned that they might not reach an agreement by a Feb. 5 regulatory deadline. A merger would extend a surge of deal-making across the mining industry.
A major driver of the surge in interest is copper, which hit record prices over the past year amid both demand by the clean-energy and technology industries and uncertainty over President Trump’s plans to impose levies on the metal.
Copper was a major consideration behind the combination of two top mining rivals, Anglo American and Teck Resources, in one of the sector’s biggest-ever transactions. BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, only recently ended efforts to buy Anglo American, while Glencore unsuccessfully bid for Teck, ultimately buying one of Teck’s coal businesses.
Glencore and Rio Tinto held talks to combine in 2024 but called off the discussions amid a disagreement over valuations. Since then, however, Rio Tinto has named as its chief executive Simon Trott, who has spoken openly of considering changes to bolster the company’s growth.
His counterpart at Glencore, Gary Nagle, has talked up his company’s ambitions to become the “biggest copper producer in the world,” he said in December. (Glencore is currently the sixth largest, with one of its most significant assets being a giant copper mine in Chile.)
Glencore has also reshuffled its business mix, including consolidating its coal operations into one Australian-based entity. That could make a deal more enticing for Rio Tinto, which got out of coal nearly a decade ago and is seen by some analysts as potentially reluctant to return to the sector.
Shares in Glencore jumped nearly 10 percent on Friday. London-based shares in Rio Tinto were down more than 2 percent after the news, while shares in Australia fell more than 6 percent.