Teck Resources: From Glencore’s Hostile Bid to the Anglo American Merger

Teck Resources spent three years turning a family-controlled coal-and-copper conglomerate into the copper half of a new global miner, and the sequence of decisions it made along the way is the clearest case study in Canadian resource M&A of the decade. The company fought off Glencore, sold the coal that had paid its dividends for a generation, nursed a troubled Chilean mega-project into stable production and then negotiated a merger that keeps the head office in Vancouver while handing the chief executive’s chair to a London company. This article traces the Keevil family’s dual-class control, the Glencore bid and the coal sale, the Quebrada Blanca ramp-up, the Anglo American deal and the Investment Canada conditions attached to it, and what founders and investors should take from the outcome. It is part of the Canada Company Stories hub.

How did the Keevil family keep control of Teck for so long?

The Keevils controlled Teck through a dual-class share structure that gave 100 votes to each Class A share and one vote to each Class B share, so that a small economic stake translated into a majority of the votes. Norman Keevil Sr., a geophysicist born in Saskatchewan in 1910, acquired Teck-Hughes Gold Mines in the 1960s and ran the company until 1981; his son Norman Keevil Jr. joined as vice-president of exploration in 1963, oversaw Teck’s involvement in Hemlo, Voisey’s Bay and Antamina, and chaired the company from 2000 to 2018. The family’s holding company, Temagami Mining, and Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Mining together held most of the Class A shares.

That structure let Teck behave unlike other large miners. It stayed diversified across copper, zinc and steelmaking coal when peers specialised; it kept its head office in Vancouver when the Canadian industry drifted to Toronto, the subject of the article on Barrick, Agnico Eagle and Toronto’s mining capital; and it was able to say no to buyers who offered a premium that ordinary shareholders would have accepted. Governance critics argued for years that the dual-class shares entrenched a family with a modest economic interest and depressed the valuation, and they were partly right: Teck’s Class B shares traded at a persistent discount to the sum of its parts.

The structure began to unwind in February 2023, when Teck proposed to split itself into a copper-and-zinc company and a coal company, Elk Valley Resources, while putting a six-year sunset on the multiple-voting rights of the Class A shares. The sunset was the price of persuading Class B holders to approve the separation, and the proposal meant the Keevils were preparing to relinquish control on their own timetable. Glencore’s intervention forced the timetable forward.

What happened when Glencore made its hostile bid in 2023?

Glencore launched an unsolicited proposal in early April 2023 to merge with the whole of Teck and then spin out the combined coal businesses, valuing Teck at about US$23.1 billion. The board rejected it as an opportunistic attempt to take advantage of the pending separation vote, and rejected a revised version that offered Teck shareholders the option of cash instead of shares in the coal spin-off. Norman Keevil Jr. said publicly that the company would not be sold to Glencore, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government signalled that any deal transferring control of a Canadian mining champion to a Swiss trader would face a hard Investment Canada review.

The defence held, but the separation did not. On 26 April 2023 Teck withdrew the spin-off resolution shortly before the shareholder meeting because it could not secure the two-thirds majority of Class B votes required; some large holders preferred a sale of the coal business to a spin-off, and proxy advisers had split. Glencore kept talking, and in November 2023 Teck announced a different outcome: it would sell the steelmaking coal business, Elk Valley Resources, outright. Glencore would buy 77 per cent for about US$6.9 billion in cash, Nippon Steel 20 per cent and POSCO 3 per cent, in transactions that valued the business at roughly US$9 billion.

The Canadian government approved the Glencore purchase in July 2024 subject to conditions that included keeping the coal head office in Vancouver, maintaining Canadian employment levels and committing to the Elk Valley water-treatment obligations. Teck used the proceeds to pay down debt and launch buybacks, and emerged as a pure copper-and-zinc producer with a net cash balance sheet, which is exactly what it had wanted the 2023 separation to achieve. Glencore got the coal it had bid for, but without control of Teck’s copper, which turned out to be the asset everyone else wanted.

Why was Quebrada Blanca so expensive and does it work now?

Quebrada Blanca Phase 2, or QB2, is a sulphide copper mine in the Tarapacá region of northern Chile, operated by Teck with Sumitomo Metal Mining, Sumitomo Corporation and Chilean state copper company Codelco as partners, and it ran about US$4 billion over its original budget. Construction began in 2019, was interrupted by the pandemic, and was then hit by problems at the processing plant, geotechnical issues and difficulties with the tailings management facility; first production came in 2023 and the mine then spent two years below nameplate throughput while Teck rebuilt the tailings embankment in stages it calls “rock benches”.

By 2026 the operation had stabilised. QB produced 55,800 tonnes of copper in the second quarter of 2026, up from 52,700 a year earlier, with recoveries of 83.3 per cent and no concentrator downtime attributable to the tailings facility after Rock Bench 5 was completed. Net cash unit costs fell to US$1.83 a pound from US$2.45 a year before. Management described it as the third consecutive quarter of stable performance and was evaluating whether to accelerate Rock Bench 6 into 2026 at a cost of around US$100 million of additional capital, which would allow permanent pipeline installation in the fourth quarter. The mine’s 2025 net cash unit cost of US$2.67 a pound had come in at the bottom of guidance.

QB matters to the Anglo American deal because it sits next door to Collahuasi, in which Anglo holds 44 per cent alongside Glencore and Japan’s Mitsui. The two companies estimated that operating the deposits together, sharing processing capacity and infrastructure, could add an average US$1.4 billion a year of EBITDA on a 100 per cent basis between 2030 and 2049, equivalent to roughly 175,000 tonnes of additional annual copper. That adjacency, rather than head-office savings, is the industrial logic that distinguishes the Anglo combination from the Glencore approach three years earlier.

What are the terms of the Anglo American merger?

Teck and Anglo American announced a merger of equals on 9 September 2025 to create Anglo Teck, described by both as a global critical-minerals champion. Each Teck Class A and Class B share converts into 1.3301 Anglo American ordinary shares, leaving Anglo’s existing shareholders with about 62.4 per cent of the combined company and Teck’s with about 37.6 per cent. There is no premium, but Anglo American is to pay its own shareholders a special dividend of about US$4.5 billion, roughly US$4.19 a share, before completion, which rebalances the exchange ratio in Teck’s favour; the two companies agreed in September 2026 to extend the payment window for that dividend to 45 days after the effective date.

Anglo Teck will have its global headquarters in Vancouver, with corporate offices in London and Johannesburg, and a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange alongside listings in Johannesburg, Toronto and, through depositary receipts, New York. Sheila Murray, Teck’s chair, becomes chair of the combined company; Duncan Wanblad of Anglo American becomes chief executive, Jonathan Price of Teck becomes deputy chief executive and chief strategy officer, and John Heasley becomes chief financial officer, with all three based in Canada. The executive team announced in July 2026 also includes Ruben Fernandes as chief operating officer, Karla Mills as chief projects officer and Alison Atkinson as chief technical officer.

The financial case rests on about US$800 million of annual pre-tax recurring synergies, roughly 80 per cent of which is expected on a run-rate basis by the end of the second year after completion, plus the Collahuasi-QB adjacency described above. The combined group would produce about 1.2 million tonnes of copper a year from Chile, Peru and Canada, rising to around 1.35 million tonnes in 2027, which would make it a top-five global copper producer with more than 70 per cent of its business in the metal. Anglo’s remaining assets include iron ore in South Africa and Brazil and the De Beers diamond business, which it is trying to sell after writing its carrying value down to US$2.3 billion at the end of 2025.

What did Canada demand under the Investment Canada Act?

Ottawa approved the merger on 15 December 2025 after the two companies accepted binding commitments designed to answer the political objection that Canada was losing another national champion. The headline undertaking is a minimum of about C$4.5 billion of investment in Canada over the first five years after completion, which the companies expect to grow to at least C$10 billion over fifteen years. The money is earmarked for the Highland Valley Copper mine-life extension in British Columbia, which currently produces around 100,000 tonnes of copper a year; expanded critical-minerals processing at the Trail metallurgical complex; and advancing the Galore Creek and Schaft Creek copper projects in the province’s northwest.

The companies also committed to no net reduction in Canadian employment, a Canadian-majority board and executive team, at least C$300 million of critical-minerals exploration and technology spending in Canada over five years, and a Toronto Stock Exchange listing for Anglo Teck plc. The chief executive, deputy chief executive and chief financial officer must be based in Canada. These conditions mirror, in more demanding form, the undertakings Glencore gave when it bought the coal business in 2024, and they reflect the government’s stated policy that transactions involving large Canadian mining companies will be approved only in the most exceptional circumstances.

The merger still needed clearance in several foreign jurisdictions at the time of writing. Competition approvals had been secured in Canada and Australia by December 2025, the European Commission’s review began in January 2026, and Chinese approval was the most closely watched, since China is the largest buyer of both companies’ copper concentrate. Anglo’s chief executive said in February 2026 that completion was expected between September 2026 and March 2027, and Teck repeated that window in its July 2026 results and its September 2026 update on the special dividend. Shareholders had approved the deal overwhelmingly on 9 December 2025, with about 99 per cent of votes cast in favour at both companies, and the Supreme Court of British Columbia granted its final order the same month.

How strong is Teck’s business as it enters the merger?

Teck is going into the combination at the top of its operating cycle. In the second quarter of 2026 it produced 135,900 tonnes of copper, 25 per cent more than a year earlier, with higher output at every copper operation, and it realised an average copper price of US$6.05 a pound. Revenue rose to C$3.61 billion from C$2.02 billion, adjusted EBITDA roughly tripled to C$2.19 billion, and adjusted profit attributable to shareholders reached C$948 million, or C$1.93 a share, against C$187 million a year earlier. Copper net cash unit costs fell to US$1.64 a pound from US$2.02.

The balance sheet was correspondingly strong: C$6.05 billion of cash, total liquidity of C$10.3 billion and net cash of C$1.24 billion at 30 June 2026, against total debt and leases of C$4.8 billion. Full-year 2026 guidance of 455,000 to 530,000 tonnes of copper and 410,000 to 460,000 tonnes of zinc was unchanged. For 2025 as a whole Teck had reported adjusted EBITDA of C$4.33 billion and adjusted earnings of C$3.10 a share, with profit from continuing operations attributable to shareholders of C$1.4 billion, and it ended that year in a net cash position.

Two developments in 2026 add to the Canadian story. In July, Teck signed an agreement with the Canada Growth Fund and the new Canada Critical Minerals Accelerator under which the fund would invest up to C$400 million in equity-like form directly into the Trail smelter, supporting a Teck investment of up to C$850 million that could double Trail’s germanium and antimony capacity and add gallium, with Ottawa taking offtake rights to part of the output; it was the first transaction under the accelerator, which Export Development Canada manages. And Highland Valley’s life extension, one of the Investment Canada commitments, is now funded within the group’s capital plan. Both tie Teck’s assets more closely to the policy agenda described in the article on Canada’s critical minerals strategy.

Why did Teck choose Anglo American rather than stay independent?

Teck chose a merger because it had become too small to build the next generation of copper mines alone and too attractive to be left alone. After the coal sale it was a mid-sized copper and zinc producer with one very large growth project that had already consumed far more capital than planned. Its development pipeline, including Zafranal in Peru, San Nicolás in Mexico (a joint venture with Agnico Eagle), Galore Creek and Schaft Creek in British Columbia and the Highland Valley extension, would have required a decade of spending at a time when copper prices were rising and every major in the industry was hunting for growth; both BHP and Glencore had circled Teck or Anglo within the previous two years.

The Anglo deal solved several problems at once. It gave Teck a partner with adjacent assets in Chile and a complementary copper portfolio in Peru, so that the combined company could fund growth from a much larger cash flow base. It preserved the Vancouver head office and Canadian identity that the Keevil family and the government cared about, which Glencore’s approach could not have done. And it was structured as a nil-premium combination in which Teck shareholders kept 37.6 per cent of a much larger company rather than taking cash and leaving, which was the only form in which a deal could pass both the Class A holders and the Investment Canada test.

For Anglo American the logic was equally defensive. Having rejected BHP’s approach in 2024, demerged its platinum business, put De Beers up for sale and begun exiting nickel and coal, Anglo needed a transaction that would make it predominantly a copper company before another suitor returned. Teck’s shareholders, who had been offered US$23.1 billion in 2023, ended up with 37.6 per cent of an enterprise worth around US$53 billion, with a share of US$800 million of synergies and the Collahuasi upside on top. It is a result that justifies the family’s refusal to sell, whatever one thinks of the governance structure that made the refusal possible.

What does the deal mean for Vancouver and British Columbia?

The merger makes Vancouver the headquarters of one of the five largest copper producers in the world, which is a significant outcome for a city that had watched most of Canada’s large mining companies drift east or disappear. Anglo Teck’s chief executive, deputy chief executive and chief financial officer will be based there, the board will have a Canadian majority and the Canadian commitments are front-loaded into the first five years. For British Columbia, which has designated Trail’s strategic-metals expansion as one of eighteen priority resource projects, the combination promises capital for Highland Valley, Trail, Galore Creek and Schaft Creek that a stand-alone Teck would have had to ration.

There are costs that the undertakings do not capture. Strategic decisions about where to deploy Anglo Teck’s capital will be taken with a London primary listing and a global shareholder base, and the Canadian assets will compete with Quellaveco in Peru and Collahuasi and Los Bronces in Chile for funding. The port and rail capacity that Teck’s zinc and copper concentrates depend on, described in the article on the Port of Vancouver and Prince Rupert, will be planned by a company with many more options. Investors in Canada’s large pension funds, which held Teck through the whole saga, will find themselves owning a London-listed share.

The experience of the coal sale is encouraging on this point. Glencore kept the Elk Valley head office in Vancouver, maintained employment and continued the water-treatment programme, and the business has been run from British Columbia since July 2024 without visible reduction in local presence. The Anglo Teck conditions are stronger and longer, and the political cost of breaching them in a country that has just spent two years defending its resource sector against American tariffs, covered in the Canada-US trade war article, would be high.

What can founders and investors learn from Teck?

The first lesson is that control is only worth having if it is used for strategy rather than entrenchment. The Keevils’ super-voting shares were criticised for decades, but when the moment came the family used them to reject a low bid, accept a sunset, sell the asset that no longer fitted and choose a partner on terms that kept the company’s identity. A controlling shareholder who cannot articulate what the control is for will eventually lose it on worse terms.

The second is that separating businesses often creates more value than selling them together. Glencore wanted Teck’s copper and coal as a package; by splitting them, Teck sold the coal to the buyer who valued it most and kept the copper for a partner who valued that most, and the sum was larger than any single bid. The same principle underlies carve-outs across industries, from the asset-management spin-offs at Brookfield to the North American IPO Barrick is preparing.

The third is that execution risk on a flagship project can swamp corporate strategy. QB2’s US$4 billion overrun and two-year ramp-up weakened Teck’s hand in 2023 and made a stand-alone future harder to fund; its stabilisation in 2025 and 2026 was what made a nil-premium merger of equals credible. Investors assessing any company with one dominant growth project should model the corporate consequences of a 50 per cent cost overrun, not just the project economics.

The fourth is for policymakers: conditions work better than vetoes. By attaching headquarters, employment, investment and listing undertakings to approval, Ottawa secured more Canadian investment from Anglo Teck than Teck alone was likely to make, without blocking a transaction that shareholders overwhelmingly wanted. The approach contrasts with the 2010 rejection of BHP’s bid for PotashCorp, discussed in the article on Nutrien and Saskatchewan potash, and it is likely to be the template for the next generation of Canadian resource deals.

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