Starting next Monday there will be a non-stop flow of bad news from the world’s mining majors as management teams make public confessions about the mess they’ve made of the companies they run, beg for shareholder forgiveness and wait for the axe to fall.

First into the confessional, on the day the great Mining Indaba conference kicks off in Cape Town, is South Africa’s Anglo American Platinum, which has been hammered by falling demand, lower prices, rising costs and vicious industrial strife at its deep, loss-making mines – how big a loss will become clear in the company’s full-year results for 2012.

Then follows a cavalcade of potentially industry-changing events, including:

• February 12, Anglo American’s iron ore business unit, Kumba, reports its full year result, together with the 2012 production reports from Glencore and its soon-to-be-merged associate Xstrata.

• February 14 is results day for Rio Tinto, a keenly awaited event which will disclose how much damage has been done to the company by the huge write-downs on aluminium and coal, while also being the first public appearance of the new boy in the top job, Sam Walsh.

• February 15 is results day for the full Anglo American group and a chance to farewell outgoing chief executive Cynthia Carroll and welcome its new boy in the top job Mark Cutifani.

• February 20 is half-time results day for BHP Billiton and potentially a day to discover how big its write-offs might be in aluminium and nickel, and possibly a chance to farewell its chief executive who has been sent to the departure lounge, Marius Kloppers.

• March 5 is the turn of Glencore and Xstrata to report their 2012 profits, reveal any write-offs and set the scene for the big event in the cycle which is:

• March 15, when Glencore and Xstrata’s merger is formally completed and a new mega-miner officially joins the exclusive club led by BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, and Anglo American.

Softening the market for the write-downs, losses and management changes has been underway for some time as the big miners mount a pre-emptive attack to lessen the impact of what has been a tough year.

Just how tough we are about to find out, but don’t be surprised if everyone blames last year’s fall in commodity prices for the problems being encountered today.

If that happens then Dryblower would like to deliver a pre-emptive reminder that many managers in the big miners are guilty of failing to do their most important job, keeping costs under control.

While every mining company is different in some way the reality is that management at all companies was too quick to claim credit from rising prices in the boom years, overlooking the fact that the price of what they sell is generally beyond their control.

Managing costs has been the Achilles heel of the mining industry over the past five years, a period when everyone scrambled to expand output, no matter what the cost.

Watching the cost chickens come home to roost has been a sobering affair, and a personally damaging one for Cynthia Carroll at Anglo American, Tom Albanese at Rio Tinto and Marius Kloppers at BHP Billiton.

The man missing from that line up of leaders is the man Dryblower will be watching most closely over the rest of 2013, the man most likely to light a fire under his competitors, Glencore’s Ivan Glasenberg.

Suspiciously quiet over the past few months, apart from a headline grabbing moment last week when the letterbox at his Swiss home was bombed by anti-everything protestors, Glasenberg is a unique figure in world mining.

He is (apart from Andrew Forrest at the relatively small Fortescue Metals Group) a major shareholder in the company he runs.

It is his 8.27% stake in the merged Glencore/Xstrata, combined with a personal determination to continue expanding, which makes Glencore the shark in global mining waters, and after March 15 he will be dusting off the files on future takeover targets.

Tipping Glasenberg’s hit-list is not easy but on this occasion it might be easier than ever because Rio Tinto is the deeply wounded member of the elite group of top miners, haemorrhaging from failed investments and largely owned by frustrated investment funds which might even welcome a chance to back a wholesale shake-up.

If the price is right, even monopoly obstacles which slowed BHP Billiton’s move on Rio Tinto a few years ago can be easily fixed.

All that Glencore has to do is sell everything Rio Tinto owns except its iron ore division, the only strong business in the company, and a glaring omission on the Glencore asset register.

Would Glasenberg be so bold as to mount a raid on Rio Tinto?

Absolutely!