2019 Mongolia Economic Forum launched to boost sustainable development www.xinhuanet.com

The 2019 Mongolia Economic Forum kicked off here Wednesday to discuss the sustainable development of the country's economy at a time when poverty remains a pressing concern.

Mongolia’s Tavan Tolgoi Said to Ramp Up Work on $1 Billion IPO www.bloomberg.com

Mongolian state-owned coal miner Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi JSC is ramping up work on a planned Hong Kong initial public offering that could raise more than $1 billion, people familiar with the matter said.
The coal miner has hired an adviser to oversee preparations
for the share sale, including the underwriter selection process,
said the people, who asked not to be identified as the
information is private. The company has been interviewing banks seeking a role on the IPO and targets a listing as soon as next year, the people said.
A successful IPO would mark at least the third effort to
raise money to develop the Tavan Tolgoi mine after international partnerships failed in 2011 and 2015. Mongolian lawmakers in 2018 approved a plan to sell up to 30% of Tavan Tolgoi mine.
Deliberations on the share sale are at an early stage and
details including size and timing may change, the people said.
Representatives for Mongolia’s Ministry of Mining and Tavan
Tolgoi didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Tavan Tolgoi, which means “five hills,” refers to the
original location of the coal ore, according to its website.
Tavan Tolgoi coal mine, located in the Gobi desert, is the
largest coal ore in Mongolia. Its deposit is estimated at a
total of over 6 billion tonnes of coal, and more than one-third
of which is high-grade, hard-coking coal, the website said.
Mongolia has been hopeful of a share sale of Tavan Tolgoi
since the country started exporting coal to China in 2011. A $3
billion international share sale plan for 2012 didn’t
materialize after Ulaanbaatar changed its plans for investment
in the coal mine. An attempt to shore up $4 billion investment
from a consortium including China Shenhua Energy Co. and Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. fell through in 2015 after the parliament stepped in saying it needed to review terms of the deal.

Mongolian singer sentenced two years in prison www.news.mn

Famous Mongolian singer B.Amarkhuu was sentenced to two years in prison by the Khan-Uul District Court in Ulaanbaatar today (29 October). He was arrested on 20 September while using drugs in Ulaanbaatar. According to one source, he was taken from a car parked in from of a hotel by police and arrested. The police have also conducted a search at B.Amarkhuu’s home.

Five general development plans implemented throughout the history of Ulaanbaatar www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Today marks the 380th anniversary of the establishment of the capital city Ulaanbaatar. On the occasion of the event, a scientific conference took place under the theme ‘Historic Timeline of the Establishment of the City: the Past, the Present, and the Future’ yesterday on October 28.

The establishment of the ‘Urguu’ yurt monastery and the state ceremony organized for the first Bogd Gegeen enthronement of the Undur Gegeen Zanabazar in the current Bureg soum of Uvurkhangai aimag in 1639 is considered as the establishment of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. Due to various socio-political and weather conditions, the Undur Gegeen’s palace yurt was moved in 1778, finding its current settlement. During this time, the capital city had various names, such as Urguu, Ikh Khuree, and Niislel Khuree, being the center for governance, socio-economics, culture, and religion. It was with the adoption of the first Constitution of Mongolia in 1924 that the capital city began to be named Ulaanbaatar.

The general development plan for Ulaanbaatar was developed in 1954, 1961, 1975, 1986, and 2002, and implemented a total of five times. Currently, the general development plan for the city until 2040, and the city’s prospective goals for 2030 is being developed.

Governor of the Capital City and Mayor of Ulaanbaatar S.Amarsaikhan said, “It is important to restore the historical attractions of our city and promote it to children and youth. As history is the sole pillar for the values of the city, we must discuss how the capital city has developed, and what we should aim for in the future with scholars and professional organizations. We must bring citizen development, city planning and policy to the level it competes not only in the region but on the global level. In its framework, the general development plan for 2040 and the prospective goals for 2030 are currently being developed.”

Advisor architect of Mongolia, scholar D.Khaisambuu said, “The results of the five general development plans have been unsatisfactory. In the 21st century, we must create the material base for the fourth industrial revolution, A.I., and advanced technology, and prepare specialists in the field of city planning. Compared to the 1950s, the city of Ulaanbaatar has greatly changed. However, building many tall buildings should not be the main focus. The issue of space between each building has now become a problem, especially in apartment complexes. In the 1950s, Ulaanbaatar was originally planned to have 600 thousand residents. The population then grew by 130 thousand in 1970. The issue we currently face was simply a mistake by the Government in the 1960s, making the decision to establish all types of institutions, from ministries to prisons in the capital city.”

Currently, 1.46 million people are living in Ulaanbaatar, which is 46 percent of the total population. Furthermore, 95 percent of universities and colleges, 31 percent of schools, 46 percent of kindergartens, and 67 percent of total entities are registered in Ulaanbaatar. The city also makes 64 percent of the GDP and is accountable for 77 percent of loans.

The men who would be king of Glencore move into the spotlight www.mining.com

Contenders for the biggest job in commodity trading, the head of Glencore, will be on parade this week. Outgoing CEO Ivan Glasenberg wanted his successor to look “like me,” and the main aspirants do.

Glasenberg announced last December his plan to retire in the next few years, firing the starting gun on a closely watched race. The three most likely choices are Gary Nagle, Kenny Ives and Nico Paraskevas. They’re barely known outside Glencore, however, and as the global metals industry descends on London for LME Week, miners, traders and investors will be jostling to find out more.

The passage of the chief executive officer’s baton at Glencore is more than another corporate transition. The firm is the world’s largest commodity trader, dominating transactions in most industrial metals, including copper, zinc and aluminum. The CEO of the Swiss-based, London-listed company has had an outsized role in shaping the world of commodity trading since Glencore was founded by Marc Rich in 1974.

Glasenberg, 62, in charge since 2002, hasn’t announced the candidates to succeed him. He has said, though, that there are “three to four guys” on the shortlist; that next CEO should be from a younger generation; and that “I hope he looks like me.” No women are in the running.

While three candidates top the list, nothing is final, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be identified discussing a confidential issue. Two of the executives have early career paths that broadly mirror Glasenberg’s, having trained in South Africa as accountants. Unlike the CEO’s generation of senior traders, many of whom became billionaires in the company’s 2011 flotation, none has a large equity stake in the company.

The succession will depend in part on how and when Glasenberg leaves. Glencore’s dealings in Nigeria, Venezuela and the Democratic Republic of Congo are under investigation in the U.S., and that has triggered speculation the CEO may step aside sooner than he has envisaged.

If that happened, one of the company’s older hands might take the reins—for example Peter Freyberg, recently elevated to oversee the company’s industrial operations, or Tony Hayward, the former BP CEO who is currently Glencore’s non-executive chairman.

Here are the three lead contenders:

Gary Nagle
If looking like Glasenberg is a job requirement, Nagle may be the man—some who know him call him a “mini-Ivan.” He’s South African like his boss, and similarly has degrees in commerce and accounting from the University of Witwatersrand. Also like Glasenberg, he built his career by rising through the ranks of Glencore’s coal department.

Nagle, 44, is also the most asset-focused of the likely successors. That could be an advantage as mining accounts for an increasing share of Glencore’s income and the company moves away from its roots as a pure trader.

Nagle joined Glencore in 2000 as an asset manager in the coal department, going on to become chief executive of its Colombian coal operation, Prodeco, in December 2007. Following the acquisition of Xstrata, he was moved to run the company’s South Africa-focused alloy assets, and last year was named head of coal assets.

Kenny Ives
Ives, Glencore’s head of nickel since 2012, is probably the candidate best known outside the company’s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland. Gregarious and well liked in the metals industry, he has a traditional trader’s regard for personal connections. In an interview with a student at a Swiss university, he said: “When I got involved in this business back in the ‘90s, I remember my boss at the time saying to me, ‘Kenny, this business is about three things: relationships, relationships and relationships.’ It’s true.”

Ives grew up in Brighton, southern England, where he paid his school fees “in cash out of an old Tesco carrier bag,” according to an interview with an alumni website. He joined Glencore in 1998, straight out of university, and for the first decade traded copper concentrates, spending a year in China.

In the Glencore mold, he’s a sports enthusiast who captained his school soccer team and regularly leads morning or lunchtime runs.

Ives’s time at Glencore hasn’t been without missteps. According to several current and former colleagues, he clashed with the then bosses of the copper, lead and zinc department, Telis Mistakidis and Daniel Mate, leading to his transfer to the grain division in 2008, from where he moved to nickel.

Nico Paraskevas
A Greek citizen who spent much of his career in Africa, Paraskevas is, like Glasenberg, a chartered accountant and a graduate of the University of Witwatersrand. He also spent time in the coal department, working for Glencore’s South African unit Shanduka from 2007 to 2009.

Paraskevas moved to the Democratic Republic of Congo as finance and then commercial director of Glencore’s copper unit there, later becoming CFO of Katanga Mining, based in Johannesburg.

Last year, Katanga was fined by the Ontario Securities Commission for misstating its accounts. Most of the conduct that was censured occurred after Paraskevas left as CFO in November 2012. The company did acknowledge, however, that it “failed to maintain adequate internal controls” from Jan. 1, 2012 until March 31, 2017, a period that overlapped slightly with Paraskevas’s tenure. He hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing.

He led the disposal of Las Bambas, the Peruvian copper project that Glencore sold as part of a deal to get Chinese antitrust approval for the Xstrata acquisition. The timing of that deal was sweet for Glencore: It was consummated just before the copper market plunged. Still, Paraskevas remained relatively unknown to the wider world when he was elevated to run Glencore’s powerful copper trading division at the end of 2018.

Colleagues say he’s calmer and a less dominating personality than his predecessor and fellow Greek national, Telis Mistakidis. He has overseen a less aggressive trading strategy by Glencore in the LME copper market. Paraskevas also has taken a more direct role in the trading of cobalt, a byproduct of Glencore’s Congolese copper mines that rapidly became one of the group’s highest-profile commodities.

(By Jack Farchy)

Crypto contradiction: Boom Bust explores how governments try to control cryptocurrencies that were not meant to be regulated www.rt.com

China’s Central Bank has unveiled plans to roll out its own digital currency, which will be called DCEP (Digital currency Electronic Payment). Beijing has been working on the project for about five or six years.
RT’s Boom Bust talks to Todd Horwitz of Bubba Trading about the latest in digital currency developments.

New Mongolian oilfield discovered www.news.mn

Mongolia’s first ever oil refinery is now under construction in Dornogobi province. The Zuunbayan oilfield in East Gobi, the first oil reserve, was discovered in December 1940 by Mongolian geologist J.Dugersuren and Soviet geologist Yu.S.Zhelubovsky.

Speaker G.Zandanshatar meets U.S. delegates www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar/MONTSAME/. On October 28, G.Zandanshatar, Speaker of Mongolian Parliament, received delegates led by Alan Turley, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for China and Mongolia in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration.

Mongolia not to reverse ban on low-grade coal for domestic use in capital www.xinhuanet.com

The Mongolian government will not reverse its decision on an imposed ban on the burning of low-grade coal for domestic use in the capital, the country's Prime Minister Ukhnaa Khurelsukh has said.

S. Tuna Sahin: Sector diversification of Mongolian SMEs is the right path www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Business owners attending in the international business forum, ‘Export Mongolia-2019’, are learning about domestic and foreign practices on the development of small and medium enterprises aside from participating in meetings and workshops.