With Foreign Legion energy, Glencore’s Murray scales business

During five years in the French Foreign Legion, Glencore International Chairman Simon Murray was sent on missions ranging from death defying to merely gruesome. ¶ Dispatched to rescue trapped comrades encircled by Algerian independence fighters in the Aures Mountains in 1961, Murray survived an ambush in which the Legionnaire beside him died in a hail of machine gun bullets. ¶ After another battle, Murray was ordered to stuff the severed heads of two enemy soldiers into his pack and carry them back to base for identification, blood dripping down his back. When he quit the Legion in 1965 with the rank of senior corporal, British-born, Hong Kong-based Murray didn’t leave his combativeness behind. He has headed Deutsche Bank in Asia and been taipan — Cantonese for “big boss” — of billionaire Li Ka-shing’s business empire. At age 63, he became the oldest man to reach the South Pole unaided, on a 58-day slog during which he lost 50 pounds.

“Simon is one of the most extraordinary characters I have met,” says Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust and the last colonial governor of Hong Kong before the British ceded it to the Chinese in 1997. “He is brave, outspoken, funny and pushes himself to almost crazy lengths.”

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( Martin Hartley / eyevine / eyevine / Redux / MARTIN HARTLEY / EYEVINE/REDUX ) - Simon Murray, right, and Pen Hadow, British explorers on the Tetley South Pole Mission.In 2005, Simon Murray became the oldest man to reach the South Pole unaided.

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Price plunge

At 71, Murray is facing new challenges. As the recently appointed chairman of Glencore, Murray in May helped to steer the world’s biggest commodities-trading company through a $10 billion initial public offering in London and Hong Kong, the largest IPO to date in 2011.

And as a director of Sino-Forest, a Chinese tree-plantation company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, Murray watched the company’s share price plunge 67 percent between June 2 and Aug. 26, when the Ontario Securities Commission suspended the stock from trading, saying the company may have misstated revenue.

The suspension followed similar claims by short seller Carson Block’s Muddy Waters research firm in a June 2 report that Sino-Forest was overstating its assets. Investors, including hedge fund firm Paulson, have lost $3.4 billion.

Sino-Forest has denied the allegations and has commissioned an independent investigation. Founder and chief executive officer Allen Chan resigned Aug. 28, and the company said three other employees had taken leave.

Chan and other insiders, including Murray, sold 81 million Canadian dollars ($82 million) of shares since the end of 2006, according to regulatory filings in Toronto. Murray’s sales totaled 10.8 million Canadian dollars ($10.9 million), the filings show.

Murray denied any suggestion that he had been cashing out of Sino-Forest, saying he had swapped the holding for a stake in a Sino-Forest subsidiary, Hong Kong-listed Greenheart Group, of which he is also a director.

Murray owns 1,246,000 Greenheart shares, and a private-equity firm he heads, General Enterprise Management Services, owns 7 million shares. Those shares were worth a total of 7,499,140 Hong Kong dollars ($962,000) when they were suspended from trading on Aug. 29. The stock has fallen 68 percent since June 2.