China to Support the Organization of COP17 in Mongolia www.montsame.mn

 Batbayar Shurenchuluun, State Secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Climate, held a meeting with Cao Li, the Chargé d'Affaires of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Mongolia, and other relevant officials.

At the outset of the meeting, the State Secretary expressed gratitude to the PRC for providing a non-refundable financial grant of USD 1 million to support the organization of the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Emphasizing the profound significance of COP17 in driving effective, collaborative efforts to combat desertification both in Mongolia and across the wider region, State Secretary Batbayar provided a brief update on the conference preparations. He noted that Mongolia will propose three major initiatives to the international community during the conference:

"Rangelands Flagship Initiative"

"Integrated Land and Water Management Initiative"

"Nature-Based Solutions for Sustainable Infrastructure"

The State Secretary requested China's active support and cooperation in advancing these three initiatives.

The two sides also discussed the development of a feasibility study for the "China-Mongolia Desertification Prevention and Control Cooperation Center," exploring how the center's construction and future operations will focus on mitigating environmental degradation and the impacts of climate change. The establishment of the center is planned in three phases; following successful first-phase negotiations, the parties exchanged views on the ongoing preparatory works and agreed to officially initiate Phase III.

Regarding human resource development and personnel training in the environmental sector, the parties highlighted a planned training program for executive-level officials titled "Mongolia-China Desertification Control and Monitoring Cooperation." The training will be organized by the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) in Beijing in September 2026.

Moving forward, both sides agreed to continue implementing joint training and capacity-building programs tailored to their mutual environmental needs and strategic priorities.

Mongolia Says Russia Agreed to Send Emergency Fuel Supplies Amid Shortages www.themoscowtimes.com

Russia has agreed to provide Mongolia with additional shipments of gasoline and jet fuel to help relieve a fuel shortage that officials in the landlocked country have blamed on high seasonal demand, Mongolian officials said late Monday.

Mongolian Industry Minister Gongoryn Damdinnyam said Russia committed to delivering an extra 25,000 metric tons of AI-92 gasoline and 5,000 metric tons of jet fuel by the end of August.

“I express my gratitude to the Russian government and its businesses for their assistance in helping us overcome this unprecedented difficult period,” he wrote in a post on X following talks with Russian officials and executives from Rosneft and Gazprom.

Russia accounts for up to 97% of Mongolia’s gasoline and diesel imports. 

In July, Russian fuel exports to Mongolia decreased to 173,000 metric tons from 186,400 in June as it grappled with its own shortages following a series of Ukrainian drone attacks on oil refineries.

Shortages in Mongolia, meanwhile, are being driven by summer tourism and agricultural harvesting, according to local officials, who say that supply constraints have been exacerbated by shortages in Russia.

Minister Damdinnyam said that the increase in Russian fuel deliveries would eliminate “any need for rationing” in Mongolia, which has also secured additional supplies from China and South Korea.

Russia has extended its nationwide gasoline export ban through the end of the year, but Mongolia continues to receive shipments under carve-outs granted for existing intergovernmental trade agreements.

Moscow has not publicly commented on the agreement to supply Mongolia with emergency gasoline and jet fuel.

Mongolia is building its first domestic oil refinery, which is expected to be completed by 2028, to reduce its near-total dependence on Russia.

Mongolia's Eyeing London, Again www.capitalmarkets.mn

Mongolia has been absent from the world’s mining-finance capital for three decades. A listing, a mandate and a roadmap suggest that is finally changing.

The missing flag
London has, at one time or another, financed almost every resource economy on earth. Chilean copper, Kazakh uranium, Ghanaian gold: all have flags planted somewhere in the Square Mile. Mongolia, sitting on one of the world’s great mineral endowments, is the glaring exception.

The exceptions prove the rule. Rio Tinto, the mining giant, is arguably the biggest Mongolia play in London. Its most important growth asset is the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in the South Gobi, controlled outright since Rio bought out Turquoise Hill in 2022. But buying Rio for Mongolia exposure is like buying a food conglomerate for the chocolate. Beyond that, the London roster is essentially Petro Matad, the oil explorer that listed on AIM back in 2008 and has flown the Mongolian flag there more or less alone ever since.

The rest of the Mongolia story has been told on other people’s exchanges. Its exploration and mining assets have historically listed in Toronto; two Mongolian gold miners, Erdene Resource Development and Steppe Gold, ranked among the TSX’s top performers last year. Sydney is taking a growing share, with a steady stream of Mongolian juniors heading for the ASX. The country’s biggest company by market capitalisation, Mongolian Mining Corporation (MMC), has traded in Hong Kong since 2010, and nearly $6 billion of Mongolian bonds trade in Singapore. Yet London, home to the deepest pool of mining and emerging-market capital anywhere, somehow ended up with the smallest allocation.

Not for lack of trying
In January 2011, at the height of Mongolia’s boom (GDP grew more than 17% that year), the London Stock Exchange Group signed an exclusive strategic partnership to modernise and help run the Mongolian Stock Exchange. LSEG placed managers in Ulaanbaatar, installed its MillenniumIT trading engine and put a generation of brokers and regulators through its academy. The technology worked; the market around it did not yet exist. With a handful of active brokers, no institutional investor base and minimal free float, the MSE got a Formula 1 engine before anyone had built the racetrack. The exchange’s real development would come more than a decade later, under local stewardship.

Then came the Tavan Tolgoi saga. For much of the 2010s, Mongolia planned to float Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi, operator of one of the world’s largest untapped coking-coal deposits, in a $3 billion IPO spanning Hong Kong, London and Ulaanbaatar. Banks were mandated, prospectuses drafted; elections happened, coal prices moved. By 2017, the government was telling Nikkei that an international IPO was “no longer needed.” London shrugged and moved on.

Two attempts, two lessons: infrastructure without issuers is a showroom, and a single mega-asset IPO is hostage to a single moment of political and commodity alignment.

So what’s changed?
Three things. For once, Mongolia is not coming to London with a single asset and a promise. It has several compelling stories to tell at once.

First, actual listings. In January 2025, Invescore Financial Group (ICFG) was admitted to the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange, becoming the first Mongolian company ever to list in London. Modest in size, major in signal: a Mongolian financial group can meet LSE standards, get admitted and trade. More consequentially, Mongolia’s large banks, Golomt Bank among them, are actively preparing for international listings. Banks are the broadest possible proxy for an economy; when they come to market abroad, Mongolia stops being a single-asset story.

Second, the government has brought in professionals. In July 2026, the Government of Mongolia signed an agreement with Franklin Templeton to explore consolidating stakes in state-owned enterprises into an investment fund, offering units to professional investors on domestic and international exchanges, with a first portfolio targeted for international markets by the end of 2027. The template already exists, and it works: the Uzbekistan National Investment Fund (UzNIF), managed by Franklin Templeton, listed on the LSE in May 2026 after a $604 million IPO, one of London’s largest in recent years and Uzbekistan’s first international equity offering. Mongolia has just signed up to do something very similar. And note the structural difference from the Tavan Tolgoi era: instead of betting everything on one giant asset going public at one perfect moment, this is a diversified portfolio, prepared to international valuation and governance standards, with a manager who has run this exact play before.

Third, the home market finally works. A 2021 banking law pushed Mongolia’s systemically important banks to go public, and they did: Golomt Bank’s 2022 IPO and Khan Bank’s 2023 IPO were the largest in the exchange’s history, drawing tens of thousands of first-time retail investors. Market capitalisation has multiplied several times over from the mid-2010s, domestic institutional money is entering the market, and a genuine IPO culture exists. The index providers have noticed: in September 2025, Khan Bank became the first Mongolian company included in FTSE Russell’s Frontier Market Index, putting Mongolia on the same screens as Kazakhstan and Vietnam. The 2011 problem has inverted: then, Mongolia had London-grade infrastructure and no market; now it has a market whose best issuers are ready for deeper pools of capital. An international listing is no longer a leap into the void; it is the next step on a staircase that already exists.

Two tailwinds
Critical minerals. In mid-2025, the UK and Mongolia signed a roadmap for cooperation on critical minerals, and the British Geological Survey is working with Mongolian counterparts on mapping and surveying the country’s endowment. The logic is straightforward: the UK wants diversified supply chains for the minerals underpinning the energy transition; Mongolia has copper, rare earths, fluorspar and more, and wants Western capital and “third neighbour” partnerships to develop them. Between a strategy and a mine sits, inevitably, a financing, and financing mines is the oldest trick in London’s book.

The neighbourhood effect. London investors have spent the past eight years building positions, and just as importantly mental models, in economies that look remarkably like Mongolia’s. Kazatomprom raised $451 million in London GDRs in 2018. Kaspi.kz’s 2020 London IPO made it the most valuable Kazakh listed company in history. Air Astana’s $370 million triple listing in February 2024 ranked among the LSE’s largest IPOs that year, and Uzbekistan made its sovereign-bond debut on the LSE in 2019. Resource-rich, landlocked, positioned between Russia and China, reforming state enterprises, young and digitising fast: an investor who has done the work on Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan does not need Mongolia explained from scratch. The analytical framework transfers and the risk rhymes: Mongolia arrives in London not as an exotic one-off, but as the next name in an asset class the City already owns.

September in London
This is the backdrop for the Mongolia Investment Forum: London 2026, which Capital Markets Mongolia hosts on September 15. The inaugural London edition, in October 2025, brought Mongolia’s Deputy Prime Minister and the British Ambassador to Mongolia together with the country’s leading banks and issuers on the London Stock Exchange’s own stage. The 2026 edition convenes at a moment when every thread above is live: a bank-listing pipeline forming, the Franklin Templeton portfolio working toward its 2027 target, and a critical-minerals partnership moving from communiqué to fieldwork.

For international investors, the calculus is simple: the most interesting time to meet a market is before its listings arrive, not after. Each of these threads points to a two-to-three-year window in which Mongolia’s London presence goes from near-zero to meaningful, and the people building that presence will be in one room this September. Attendance is by invitation, via capitalmarkets.mn.

Mongolia’s presence in London has been close to non-existent for the entire modern history of its capital markets. That was a fact; it is fast becoming a dated one. Mongolia is eyeing London again, and for the first time, London has good reasons to look back.

China Bars Its Top AI Engineers From Overseas Travel And Starts A Massive Data Center Build Out In Mongolia, While NVIDIA Parries By Mobilizing $500 Billion In AI Financing www.wccftech.com

The US and China are now decoupling at an accelerating pace, all the while trying to maintain their comparative advantage in areas of intrinsic strength. For instance, China has just taken a significant step towards halting the outflow of its engineering talent to the US, while NVIDIA has just inked a number of strategic partnerships - collectively worth half a trillion dollars - to facilitate the ongoing AI build out.

China tries to squeeze the outflow of its engineering talent as NVIDIA parries with an expansive initiative that unlocks $500 billion in additional AI financing
According to Bloomberg, China is instituting sweeping travel restrictions for AI engineers employed at strategically important firms such as Alibaba and DeepSeek. These restrictions are slated to go into effect as soon as September 15, and would mandate explicit authorization from the Chinese government for any subsequent foreign travel.

This move is might be a riposte to a major upcoming gambit by the US FCC, which is considering a ban on China-sourced optical transceivers that convert electrical signals into light pulses via an LED, and at the other end of a given fiber optic cable, convert the incoming light into electrical signals via a photodiode.

Meanwhile, NVIDIA has just inked an agreement with financial behemoths such as "Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to mobilize over $500 billion of third-party capital for the buildout of AI infrastructure over time."

While details are scarce at the moment, NVIDIA apparently has inked MOUs with six of the world's "premier financial institutions" to establish a compute financing platform that would unlock debt-based financing of NVIDIA's GPUs and data center racks for hyperscalers and neoclouds, and where those GPUs would presumably serve as collateral for the loans. This would eliminate the risk that NVIDIA itself is taking right now by signing circular financing deals with its partner neoclouds such as CoreWeave.

Meanwhile, China is building massive AI data centers in the desert of inner Mongolia, where the copious solar energy significantly reduces the cost to energize these data centers, which certainly seems to be a cheaper route than what Elon Musk is attempting by placing AI data centers in low-Earth orbit.

BY Rohail Saleem 
About the author: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.

ADB Appoints John Juhyun Jeong as New Country Director for Mongolia www.thediplomaticinsight.com

The Asian Development Bank has appointed John Juhyun Jeong as its new Country Director for Mongolia, with the appointment taking effect as he began the role in Ulaanbaatar this week.

Jeong will oversee ADB’s operations in Mongolia, including carrying out the country partnership strategy for 2025–2028, which backs Mongolia’s push for diversified, inclusive, and sustainable growth.

Commenting on the appointment, Jeong said ADB’s work in Mongolia rests on three strategic priorities: promoting diversified and inclusive growth, strengthening sustainability and resilience, and advancing empowerment and opportunity.

He added that he looks forward to partnering with the government, private sector, and development community to advance the country’s goals.

Jeong brings more than 17 years of professional experience to the post, including nine years at ADB. He most recently served as senior advisor to the ADB President, offering strategic guidance on key institutional priorities, and before that led private sector agribusiness investments within ADB’s Private Sector Operations Department, work that included projects in Mongolia itself.

Prior to joining ADB, Jeong worked as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in New York and Seoul, and served as a program officer with the United Nations World Food Program in Phnom Penh.

A national of the Republic of Korea, Jeong holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a master’s in public administration in international development from Harvard Kennedy School, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University. He is also a CFA charter-holder.

Mongolia has been an ADB member since 1991, and the bank has committed nearly $5 billion in public and private sector investments to support the country’s development. That support is aligned with Mongolia’s New Recovery Policy and its Vision 2050 development blueprint.

The Mongolia appointment follows a similar move for Bangladesh, where ADB recently named Qingfeng Zhang as country director, part of a broader wave of leadership changes across the bank’s regional offices this summer.

ADB, headquartered in Manila, is a multilateral development bank founded in 1966 and owned by 69 member countries, 50 of them from Asia and the Pacific region.

Construction Underway on 22 Fuel Storage Facilities www.montsame.mn

Eighteen enterprises have begun building and expanding 22 petroleum product storage facilities — some of these facilities will become operational within days. The construction of the fuel storage facilities is due in part to support from the government and concessional loan financing.

Prime Minister Uchral Nyam-Osor visited the construction of the petroleum storage facilities of San Petroleum LLC and Shunkhlai LLC on August 8.

San Petroleum LLC is building a facility with a capacity of 16,000 m³ in the 20th khoroo of Songinokhairkhan district. An 8,000 m³ portion of this represents a total investment of MNT10 billion — financed through concessional loan from a commercial bank at an annual interest rate of 9%. Construction of the storage facility is 95% complete and is due to be fully operational by August 20. Once operational, the facility will fully cover 13 days of Ulaanbaatar's AI-92 petrol consumption. The Prime Minister instructed the relevant authorities to ensure that no permitting obstacles delay the facility's commissioning.

Shunkhlai LLC, meanwhile, is building what is considered Mongolia's largest petroleum storage facility, with a capacity of 100,000 m³, in the 21st khoroo of Songinokhairkhan district, just few steps apart from the San Petroleum facility. The plan calls for seven vertical steel tanks, each with a nominal capacity of 14,000 m³, a diameter of 36 meters, and a height of 14.5 meters. The total investment amounts to MNT 151.26 billion. It is also financed through concessional loan with a similar annual interest rate of 9% as San Petroluem. Construction for this facility is at 40% and is scheduled to be fully commissioned by December 31, 2027. Once operational, the facility will hold an additional 8 to 9 days of national consumption in reserve.

Uchral at the construction site said, "For the first time in 33 years, the government has begun building petroleum reserve storage — 22 facilities in total. It has also broken the deadlock on the oil refinery project, which had been stalled for two years: construction, which had halted at 20%, has now resumed and reached 60%. Work on oil supply and exploration, stalled for 30 years, has likewise begun, with an international open tender announced for 14 sites." Uchral added, "The government, is working at every level to counter price increases and to withstand the negative effects that global conditions could have on the country."

Beyond Ulaanbaatar, projects are also underway in Umnugovi aimag (four facilities, 37,000 m³, MNT 34.1 billion), Darkhan-Uul aimag (two, 11,000 m³, MNT 10.8 billion), Bayan-Ulgii aimag (two, 5,200 m³, MNT 7.5 billion), Orkhon aimag (one, 8,000 m³, MNT 7.5 billion), and Khovd aimag (one, 10,000 m³, MNT 8.7 billion).

Construction of these facilities are more widely on their progression: some are near completion, some are just starting construction. According to the government six facilities that are more than 85% complete — belonging to Morit Govi Oil LLC, Tes Petroleum LLC, San Petroleum LLC, Sod Mongol Group LLC, Wellcom LLC, and Petroline LLC — have entered the final stages of construction and are now undergoing equipment installation, testing, calibration, and preparations for commissioning.

The enterprises that received concessional loans have signed liability agreements with the Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority, the state administrative body responsible for petroleum affairs.

"The 2027 state budget will continue the policy of supporting enterprises to expand fuel storage capacity," said Damdinnyam Gongor, Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources. "The country will gain the capacity to store up to three months of consumption, meaningfully reducing the risks and difficulties associated with sudden fuel price spikes and shortages that can arise over the short term. Concessional loans will be provided to all qualifying enterprises that have a construction site, a design, and meet the requirements," the minister said.

Special Passenger Transport Regulations to Be Implemented During COP17 www.montsame.mn

Special passenger transport regulations will be implemented during the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, taking place in Ulaanbaatar on August 17–28.

Starting August 13, 60 buses across 5 routes will connect Chinggis Khaan International Airport to delegates' hotels. Additionally, 100 public transport buses will operate on 17 routes connecting 35 hotels to the main conference venue from 6:00 AM to 8:30 PM. Participants can travel free of charge by presenting their conference registration badges. Meanwhile, the regular paid public transport service operating hourly on two routes from the international airport to the capital will continue as usual, according to Munkhnasan E., Head of the Road Transport Policy and Regulation Department of the Ministry of Road and Transport Development, during a press conference at the MONTSAME news center.

Due to temporary traffic management around the Narantuul and Dunjingarav international trade areas during the conference, short-turnaround buses will operate on two public transport routes for local residents and market employees. Specifically, traffic around Narantuul, Dunjingarav, Shine Zuun Ail commercial centers, and Ikh Mongol Street will be restricted, and parking lots for approximately 1,500 vehicles at Dunjingarav and 2,000 vehicles at Narantuul market will be closed.

Considering the expected increase in traffic congestion during the event, conference preparations, and the start of the new academic year, an even-odd license plate rotation system will apply daily from 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM across the city without designated zones, from August 15 through September 12. This restriction will not apply to public transportation, police, emergency medical services, emergency management, or media vehicles. However, on September 1, all vehicles will be permitted to participate in traffic without plate number restrictions.

COP17 will focus on desertification, land degradation, drought, pasture management, and land restoration. Currently, over 6,000 delegates from more than 190 countries have registered to attend, including approximately 150 high-level dignitaries.

Deputy Foreign Minister Receives Copy of Credentials of UK Ambassador www.montsame.mn

Amartuvshin Gombosuren, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, received a copy of the Letters of Credence from Edwin Samuel, newly appointed Ambassador of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to Mongolia, on August 10, 2026.

During the meeting, Deputy Minister Amartuvshin extended his best wishes to Ambassador Edwin Samuel in his new role and expressed satisfaction with the active development of friendly relations and cooperation between Mongolia and the UK in recent years. The two sides exchanged views on intensifying the implementation of documents aimed at elevating the level of bilateral ties. They explored opportunities to foster practical, results-oriented cooperation in sectors such as trade, economy, and education.

Ambassador Edwin Samuel expressed his delight at being appointed as the Ambassador to Mongolia and affirmed his commitment to actively working towards the continued expansion and development of Mongolian-British relations and cooperation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported.

Mongolia continues to experience fuel shortages www.xinhuanet.com

Mongolia continues to face fuel shortages amid the peak summer vacation and tourism season, with the back-to-school period also approaching.

Starting Aug. 4, all fuel stations across Mongolia began alternating the days on which they sell gasoline based on whether vehicles have even- or odd-numbered license plates, in accordance with a government decision. Gasoline purchases have also been limited to 50,000 Mongolian tugriks (about 13.8 U.S. dollars) per transaction.

The average retail price of AI-92, the most widely used type of gasoline in Mongolia, is now 2,840 Mongolian tugriks per liter.

The fuel shortage has led to long lines at fuel stations across the country, with drivers often waiting for hours and sometimes being unable to purchase gasoline that day. The situation has sparked growing public criticism and frustration.

According to Gongor Damdinnyam, Mongolia's minister of industry and mineral resources, the ongoing fuel shortage is linked to the Russia-Ukraine crisis and conflicts in the Middle East, which have contributed to instability in global energy markets and could affect fuel supplies.

The Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority of Mongolia has said that fuel supplies are expected to increase from mid-August, with the situation likely to stabilize.

Mongolia currently has no oil refinery and is entirely dependent on imported fuel, with more than 95 percent of its fuel imports coming from Russia, according to official data.

World’s biggest mining companies now worth $2.17 trillion www.mining.com

At the end of July the MINING.COM TOP 50* ranking of the world’s most valuable miners had a combined market capitalization of $2.17 trillion, up $18 billion for the month and holding a gain of $26 billion so far in 2026.

The Top 50 now runs on a monthly clock, and on a new basis: mined metals and minerals only, with coal-heavy counters excluded and every ranking back to the start of the decade recalculated to match (the notes at the bottom set out the rules of the game).

The $545 billion swing
July was a good deal livelier than the 0.8% headline move suggests.

When mining stocks were riding high on gold and copper prices at the end of March, the Top 50 was worth $2.33 trillion. By the end of June, with gold well off its record, that had shrunk to $2.15 trillion.

Stock by stock, the swings are wilder still: valued at each company’s best month-end of the year, the Top 50 would be worth $2.44 trillion. At each one’s worst, just $1.9 trillion. That $545 billion spread is the truer measure of 2026 (and most every other year on commodities markets) so far, in a ranking that never itself strayed far from $2.2 trillion.

The biggest winner and the biggest loser in July were both gold diggers, and neither had much to do with bullion, which waited until August to stage a comeback.

Zijin’s third engine
Zijin Mining added $24 billion of market value in July, up 23.8%, vaulting past Newmont into fourth place at $125 billion. No company gained more dollars, and nothing in the company’s bracket came close on percentage either.

The trigger was a first-half profit alert lodged in early July: net profit guided at roughly RMB 39.1 billion, up 68%, with gold output up 15% to just over 1.5 million ounces and silver edging up to 7.4 million ounces. The number that stands out, though, is lithium: 43,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent against 7,000 tonnes a year earlier, a sixfold ramp pulled off just as the market for the battery metal emerged from a brutal slump.

Xiamen calls lithium the group’s third growth engine, and for once the investor-day language matches the production tables. Anyone reading Zijin’s surge as a copper story should note that consolidated copper output actually fell 6%. Less than a year after becoming only the fourth mining company in history to top $100 billion, Zijin is aiming for the podium.

Polyus pulls the rip cord
At the other end, Polyus surrendered $13.2 billion (down 37.6%) and fell eight places to number 28.

On 8 July the Russian gold miner told shareholders it would suspend dividends until 2030 to fund a wave of investment projects. The stock dropped 26% in a single session, the second-worst day in its history, beaten only by the 27.4% shellacking of 16 September 2008, when Lehman Brothers was setting the mood. It kept sliding for the rest of the month.

The decision baffled a market that watched Polyus mint record earnings and some $2 billion of free cash flow last year, and Sberbank promptly struck the stock from its top picks. One theory doing the rounds in Moscow: the company is bracing for a windfall tax on gold profits, and has budgeted for bullion at a deeply unfashionable $3,100 an ounce. Polyus and Norilsk Nickel, it should be said, keep their standing in this ranking thanks to captive investors on the Moscow Exchange where sanctions have made sellers of many, but exits are few.

Middle Kingdom kings
The rest of July’s winners column reads like a Shanghai gold board: Zhongjin Gold up 21.4%, Shandong Gold up 16.9%, and outside the ranking Chifeng Jilong up more than 50%. It looks like a surge. It is closer to a bounce. Gold spent the first half of 2026 falling roughly 30% from January’s record above $5,590 an ounce, and China’s gold stocks fell considerably harder. Shandong Gold’s peak-to-trough drawdown passed 60% before bargain hunters found a sector trading at around ten times earnings.

Western precious metals went the other way: Fresnillo gave back 10% of its value, Coeur 12.9% and Agnico Eagle 5%, while Newmont slipped just enough for Zijin to relieve Denver of fourth place.

Since this snapshot was taken, gold has bounced again, surging to a seven-week high above $4,400 on Friday after the US economy shed 23,000 jobs in July, the first payrolls contraction since February. Gold bugs will take the help.

Revolving door
The price of admission rose to $13.56 billion, from $13.1 billion at the end of June, not far off the record $14.5 billion set at the end of March and more than four times the $3.2 billion that got a company through the door in 2020.

Western Mining takes the fiftieth spot after a 41.5% July, the biggest percentage move anywhere in the ranking. Casablanca’s Managem, up 106% this year on its gold and cobalt mines across Africa, debuts at 39. Lundin Gold misses by a whisker and is likely back in by the time you read this, joining Tianqi Lithium, which dropped by a quarter, and Alamos Gold.

MMG returns at 49 after a 28.6% month, and South32 re-enters at 45, up 12.2% since agreeing to sell nearly all its aluminium business to Alcoa for up to $5.6 billion. The Perth miner also broke mining’s decade-long US permitting curse in early July, bagging the final federal approval for its $2 billion-plus Hermosa zinc-silver-manganese project in Arizona, with first production pencilled in for early 2028.

The metal that matters for the slimmed-down miner may turn out to be silver: once the Alcoa sale closes, Cannington’s silver-lead-zinc output becomes more than a tenth of revenue, and with silver near $60 an ounce (against under $40 a year ago) and zinc up 26% in 2026, the market is paying up for what South32 is keeping, not just what it sold.

Then there is Amman Mineral, the ranking’s resident rollercoaster. The Indonesian copper-gold miner stormed into the Top 50 after its blockbuster 2023 debut, ran up nearly 600% to pierce the top 10 (minting half a dozen billionaires along the way), then surrendered roughly three quarters of its peak value as smelter commissioning and concentrate headaches set in, bottoming out dead last at number 50 in the Q2 count. In July it rose 25.7% to reclaim 42nd.

Baar sets a higher bar
Two days ago Glencore reported the kind of first half that headline writers call blowout: adjusted EBITDA of $10.1 billion, up 86%, a fresh $500 million buyback, and confirmation of a secondary Sydney listing for October. Copper output rose 15% just as the metal hit records, and the trading desks feasted on a volatile oil market.

The July snapshot caught the run-up: up 7.6% for the month and 34% for the year at $86 billion, Baar is firmly ensconced at number 7. It is easy to forget Glencore spent stretches of 2020 and 2021 outside the top 10 altogether and traded below its 2011 London IPO price for the better part of fifteen years.

There is a wrinkle in the timing. The six-month standstill Rio Tinto accepted when it walked away from their $260 billion mega-merger in February lapsed this week, and Melbourne promptly signalled it is in no rush to come back to the table. On numbers like these, Baar can afford to play hard to get.

Rio arrives at the standstill’s end in decent shape of its own, having just posted its highest first-half earnings in four years as the data centre boom feeds copper demand. Though on this ranking’s own 1.5 times revenue test (see the notes below) Rio is, strictly speaking, an iron ore company enjoying editorial clemency. 

Vale gets no such pass. Filed under iron ore while the long-promised Toronto listing of its base metals unit waits, the Brazilian miner posted a 35% fall in second-quarter profit and narrowed its nickel and copper output outlook. 

The air up there
BHP has added $62 billion of market value in 2026, a 41% gain no other big cap approaches in dollar terms, reaching $216 billion and sitting comfortably above the double-century mark Melbourne was first to breach. July’s production report showed record iron ore output from the Pilbara, with full-year results due mid-month. 

The $50 billion of air between the world’s biggest miner and Rio Tinto (the unbroken pair at the top) is now the widest gap between first and second in the history of this ranking. It is a remarkable turn from 2024, when the lead had thinned to $15 billion. One stock accounts for a tenth of the Top 50’s entire value.

Club rules
Melbourne is where the money lives: BHP, Rio Tinto and MMG make the Victorian capital a $395 billion head-office town, nearly a fifth of the entire ranking. Toronto’s four entries are worth $204 billion, Mexico City’s two $177 billion, Denver’s three $156 billion and Vancouver’s five $141 billion.

The gap to Toronto vanishes the day Anglo Teck books its head office in British Columbia, and that day is drawing closer. The $53 billion merger has cleared its shareholder votes and every regulator bar one, waiting only on Beijing, with completion expected by early 2027. 

The corner offices are already settling: Anglo executives take three of the four top jobs, with Duncan Wanblad leading the combined group from Vancouver. Anglo shareholders will own 62.4% of the company after banking a $4.5 billion special dividend, and Teck investors 37.6%, with each Teck share exchanged for 1.3301 Anglo shares. For now, Anglo American and Teck ride at 13 and 21.

When the deal closes, the combined company also changes columns. Under the ranking’s rules Anglo Teck lands under copper, which is exactly how the pair are selling it: about 1.2 million tonnes of output a year, rising to 1.35 million tonnes in 2027 from six large operations across Chile, Peru and Canada, with $800 million in annual pre-tax savings pencilled in by year four. 

After a divestment program that has spun off its platinum arm, sold coal and nickel, and set De Beers on its way out the door, the reclassification makes it official: Anglo’s century-plus run as a diversified mining giant ends here.

The next count lands at the end of August. On July’s evidence, a month is plenty.