Will AngloGold ditch its usual man-at-the-top?
If the rumours and speculation come to pass and Christine Ramon is appointed full-time CEO of AngloGold Ashanti, the world ’ s third-largest gold miner will be in an enviable position in terms of female representation in leadership.
AngloGold has appointed Maria Ramos as its chair after the surprise departure of Sipho Pityana after six years in the position and another seven on the board as a nonexecutive director.
Under Pityana and former CEO Kelvin Dushnisky, who left the company three months ago, AngloGold underwent a radical board-endorsed transformation, cutting all but one tie to its historical home in SA, closing and selling the last of its domestic mines, and letting the market know it wanted to shift its primary listing offshore, away from Johannesburg.
Ramos is an SA champion. She was CEO of financial group Absa, and previously the head of state-owned rail and port utility Transnet and the directorgeneral of the Treasury.
She joined the AngloGold board in 2019.
The burning question is: what now for AngloGold?
Analysts point to the longstated and difficult task of extricating itself from SA being almost finalised. It’s now a question of getting the absolute best from its international assets and securing its next growth project.
The next big appointment for AngloGold is a permanent CEO. In the traditionally hypermasculine world of mining, it would be a real coup to have a powerful female leadership team in such a large and important gold firm.
INVESTEC REINVENTION
News that Investec has completed the bulk of heavy lifting in relation to panel-beating the group into shape will raise expectations from investors that higher returns on capital are in the offing, which ought to translate to improved returns from holding the share.
While the specialist bank and wealth manager has been a decent and regular payer of dividends — and is the first SA bank to resume paying post-Covid-19
— its share price has languished in the decade since the global financial crisis.
Ten years ago, after the worst of the crisis had passed, the share traded around the R35 level before making a concerted push to above R70 in 2015, where it peaked.
Since then, it has traded sideways before moving lower to R45 a share just prior to the demerger of Investec Asset Management. This indicates that not much by way of capital gain has been enjoyed by long-term holders of the shares over the past decade.
So it was entirely appropriate when Stephen Koseff’s permanent successor, Fani Titi, identified boosting returns on capital and profitability through a simpler and streamlined operating model as the means to nudge the share price upwards and generate some momentum.
But this has proved harder to do than perhaps the management team reckoned.
First, Covid-19 arrived, a development out of management ’ s control, that was soon followed by news of costly hedging expenses that could stretch into financial year 2022.
Investors realise this has all thrown a spanner in the works, but still cling eagerly to the hope that the bad news has passed and the time for positive surprises has arrived.