Norway sovereign fund backs Teck Resources in battle with Glencore

OSLO (Reuters) -Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, one of the world’s largest investors, said on Friday it will support a plan by Canadian miner Teck Resources to spin off its metallurgical coal business and focus on copper and zinc.

By voting in favour of the Teck board’s proposed spin-off at a meeting of shareholders on April 26, the Norwegian fund implicitly rejected Swiss miner Glencore’s attempted takeover of the Canadian group.

Glencore on Wednesday said it was willing to improve its $22.5 billion offer for Teck, raising pressure on the Canadian miner to ditch a restructuring plan and sit down at the negotiating table.

But the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, which does not own shares in Glencore due to the Swiss company’s large thermal coal business, said it would vote in favour of Teck’s plan.

The Norwegian fund at the end of 2022, the last available data, owned a 1.48% stake in Teck Resources worth $287 million, while its share of voting rights under the miner’s dual-class share structure stood at 0.59%.

Glencore had last week proposed to introduce a cash component to its previous all-share bid for Teck in an effort to convince those investors who prefer a full thermal coal exit to support its proposal.

(Reporting by Terje Solsvik, editing by Essi Lehto)