Nowhere to hide

SWITZERLAND is famous for the inscrutability of its banks. Its commodity-trading houses, middlemen for more than a third of the world’s oil and half of its coffee, are also about as murky as a mug of Nescafé. So when Glencore, once the epitome of a secretive trading firm, launched the biggest share offering in the history of the London Stock Exchange, in 2011, the crucial question was how it would handle the pressures of being a public company. On September 7th it gave an answer, of sorts. After a dismal share-price performance this year, it caught shareholders by surprise, by announcing a $2.5 billion share issue and suspending the dividend. Although such moves normally send a company’s shares crashing, Glencore’s rose in reaction, out of relief that it was taking action to restore its battered finances.