Liam Denning, Columnist

OPEC Should Watch Glencore's Bunge Jump

The grain market faces many of the same pressures as the oil market.

May 25, 2017 at 11:00 AM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

1495660262_GettyImages-124732926 — Photographer: David Rogers/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

Glencore PLC's designs on Bunge Ltd. have roiled the grain-trading world. Anyone with an interest in oil might also find it worthwhile to take a five-minute break from their OPEC vigil to consider this particular merger.

As my colleague Gillian Tan laid out here, several factors have pushed Glencore toward Bunge. For its part, Bunge said on Wednesday it wasn't engaged in talks with Glencore, a soft rebuttal that did little to reduce speculative fever (Bunge's stock is up 18 percent since Monday). And little wonder: Bunge's own CEO was calling for consolidation as recently as May 3, while presenting the company's poorly received earnings.