Glencore chief strengthens board

Glencore Xstrata's chief executive, Ivan Glasenberg, has announced three new appointments to the board of the wheat trading-to-coal mining empire, including the veteran Wall Street banker John Mack.

Mr Glasenberg named the former chief executive and chairman of Morgan Stanley, whose cost cutting programmes at Wall Street banks earned him the nickname of Mack the Knife, as a new non-executive director along with Peter Grauer, the executive chairman of the financial news and data giant Bloomberg. Mr Glasenberg has himself vowed to cut hundreds of millions of costs at the trading giant.

Peter Coates, who was formerly a non-executive director at Glencore, is now to sit on the board as an executive director.

The company also said the hunt for a new chairman is "ongoing". Tony Hayward, whose leadership of BP was heavily criticised during the Deepwater Horizon disaster, is filling the role on an interim basis after Sir John Bond was dramatically ousted by shareholders at the group's annual meeting last month. Mr Hayward was senior independent director at the time.