‘It takes a lot to knock me off course’

Jonathan Worth learnt the largest lesson of his profession in his first job, working at a nickel refinery close to his hometown of Swansea.

A contemporary graduate with an Oxford diploma in metallurgy, his position was to alter how staff have been making a brand new sort of nickel-based materials. It rapidly grew to become obvious the crew, a few of whom had labored on the refinery for longer than he had been alive, had little curiosity in being informed what to do. Worth put himself on the evening shift and, swinging spanners with the workforce, learnt that making change is “extra concerning the individuals than the rest”. 

“It was nice enjoyable, nevertheless it was an excellent studying expertise as effectively,” remembers Worth, now chief govt of Teck Assets, a $22bn Canadian miner that’s among the many world’s prime producers of copper and zinc. “I discovered myself doing the identical factor 20 years later within the Pilbara or within the Bowen Basin . . . having to persuade a basic supervisor of a mining operation that altering the way in which they labored would result in enchancment.”

A 25-year veteran of the trade, Worth has been operating Vancouver-based Teck for the previous two years, after becoming a member of as chief monetary officer in 2020. As CEO, his early plans to reshape the corporate by splitting it into two companies — coal and metals — have been derailed in dramatic trend by a $23bn hostile takeover strategy from Swiss miner Glencore in April 2023.

Worth all of a sudden needed to steer Teck by way of probably the most aggressive and acrimonious merger makes an attempt within the mining trade in years. Insisting it was a non-starter, he defended the corporate in opposition to Glencore’s bid.

Teck’s possession construction helped stave off the undesirable advances — its supervoting shares are managed by Norman Keevil, the corporate’s former chief govt and the son of its founder, who was fiercely against the deal. In the end Teck did promote its coal enterprise to a Glencore-led consortium later that 12 months for $9bn, as a substitute of spinning out the enterprise to shareholders as initially deliberate. 

Worth remembers the defence in opposition to Glencore as a “difficult time”, which concerned nights within the workplace, leaving the telephone ringer on in any respect hours, and speaking to shareholders everywhere in the world.

One of many largest setbacks was when Teck was compelled to cancel a shareholder vote hours earlier than it was set to start as a result of it didn’t have sufficient votes to assist its proposal to divide the corporate into two.

The interval was the “subsequent degree of depth”, Worth says nevertheless it additionally drew his workforce collectively. He appears surprisingly tranquil when recounting the expertise. “Probably the most intense intervals you have got are additionally the best studying experiences,” he explains. “It takes quite a bit to knock me off beam.”

A few of that resilience comes from tragedy. Worth was orphaned, with out siblings or shut household, at 17, when each of his mother and father died from sickness inside months of one another. “Nearly any occasion you’ll be able to consider in a enterprise or skilled context goes to pale in significance, as in comparison with that,” he says. “It doesn’t imply I don’t deal with occasions that come up with nice depth, seriousness and exhausting work, due to course I do. However by way of how I handle my stress, I believe I’m capable of preserve important stability.”

Worth additionally credit his mother and father with instilling in him the values of exhausting work and respect — one thing he realised after they handed away. “That was fairly a formative occasion,” he says. “It modified who I’m, definitely, however that has impacted the way in which I’ve I thought of my position, my management, the way in which I work all through the remainder of my profession.”

It additionally spurred Worth to attend college — his father by no means earned a college diploma however prized schooling. An early obsession with bicycles, and the racing bike used within the 1992 Olympics by Chris Boardman, led him to check metals and metallurgy. 

At Teck, the world’s ninth-largest producer of copper and the third-largest producer of zinc, an industrial steel, Worth is now realising a plan to make use of the proceeds from the coal sale to spend money on its copper enterprise. This consists of increasing manufacturing on the Quebrada Blanca mine in northern Chile, and creating new greenfield mines in Mexico and in Peru.

“I like the method of change,” Worth says. “That kind of change I take pleasure in, I thrive on.”

Copper, which is utilized in all the pieces from electrical wires to grid infrastructure to knowledge centres, is anticipated be in excessive demand because the vitality transition gathers tempo. This has pushed a strategic shift throughout the mining trade, together with BHP’s £39bn bid for Anglo American final 12 months. Worth spent 14 years at BHP earlier than he joined Teck, finally as its chief transformation officer.

“There are main tailwinds right here for demand for brand spanking new copper, coupled with an surroundings the place there aren’t that many copper tasks which can be at a complicated stage,” says Worth. “Demand is operating effectively forward of provide.”

Many analysts and bankers count on Teck’s copper property, extremely prized by the remainder of the trade, will proceed to make the corporate a takeover goal.

But when Teck does ever do a deal, it will likely be in a position to decide on its companion. The furore in Canada over Glencore’s takeover try was so nice that the federal government rewrote takeover pointers to stop hostile offers within the sources sector. Any future acquisitions of Canadian mining corporations will solely be accredited “beneath probably the most distinctive circumstances”, the federal government introduced final 12 months.

Worth is not going to be drawn on any future offers however he does assume the mining trade goes by way of a consolidation interval. Over the last M&A increase throughout the mid-2000s, he was working in funding banking at ABN Amro. He says this era feels comparable, like “we’re going to see extra exercise from an M&A perspective”.

Recollections from working in finance inform his strategy to work. He describes transferring from nickel refinery to funding banking as “the largest tradition shock of my life”. The refinery, he says, caught to a “targeted and disciplined” day by day schedule. “You arrive at 6:30 within the morning [then] go forth and execute. At 4pm or 5pm, the whistle blows and the day’s work is over.” In banking, Worth was typically the one individual within the workplace at 9am, and would “spend a lot of the morning consuming espresso and on the point of exit for lunch,” earlier than working till 2am to complete a pitch deck. “I simply thought to myself, that is loopy.”

Worth is anxious concerning the influence the Trump administration may have. The US president has stated he’ll impose a 25 per cent tariff on all items getting into the US from Canada and Mexico. “Tariffs and commerce obstacles usually are not useful for commodity commerce flows,” says Worth.

Bankers count on useful resource nationalism to make huge worldwide mining offers tougher to recover from the road, as international locations more and more give attention to securing their very own entry to scarce sources comparable to copper and cobalt wanted within the vitality transition. 

Teck’s operations are unfold throughout US and Canadian borders: it mines zinc at Alaska’s Purple Canine mine, refines ore at its Path smelter in Canada, then sells remaining merchandise — together with zinc, lead, and germanium, a necessary steel for defence — to prospects within the US and globally.

Together with free commerce, Worth hopes to see allowing reform that may velocity up the tempo at which international locations can faucet into their home sources. “There’s a danger to the vitality transition if we don’t mine extra copper extra rapidly. We want it to assist the vitality transition,” he says. “And within the absence of that, we received’t be capable to ship the vitality transition on the tempo the world is relying on us to ship.”