Sick miners ask Anglo for details of defence – by Ernest Mabuza (Business Day Live [South Africa] – April 29, 2013)

http://www.bdlive.co.za/

THE long-awaited hearing in which 10 former Anglo miners with silicosis and silico-tuberculosis are seeking compensation began on Friday with an application to compel Anglo American to provide more details of its defence.

The Legal Resources Centre, Legal Aid SA and London-based Leigh Day have been involved in the groundbreaking class action suit since 2004. The two sides agreed last year to go to arbitration.

President Steyn, at which the 10 miners worked, was Anglo’s largest mine in the Free State in the 50-year period up to 1998. Four of the claims are brought by the next of kin of miners who have passed away since the litigation began.

The 10 plaintiffs are part of a group of 18 from the Free State, Eastern Cape and Lesotho who are claiming compensation for silicosis and silico-tuberculosis they argue were contracted when they worked at mines owned by Anglo.

Their claim is that Anglo American SA, the head office company of the Anglo group, was negligently controlled and wrongly advised the mines about dust control measures and silicosis. The former miners are seeking compensation for pain and suffering and for lost earnings and medical expenses.

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Religious groups keep an eye on global mining giants – by Kari Lydersen (Global Post – April 27, 2013)

http://www.globalpost.com/

Faithful activists converged on London to continue lobbying on behalf of those hurt by industrial mines.

LONDON — When he was studying to be a priest, Richard Solly mulled founding a group called Clergy Against Gold Exploitation — CAGE.

While presiding over weddings, his idea went, clergy would profess shock during the exchange of rings and ask, “Is that gold? Do you know how many people suffered for that?”

CAGE was just a joke. But religious activists like Solly, part of a coalition including Protestants and Catholics, have become central to the international mining watchdog and opposition movement which has developed over the past three decades. The movement has become increasingly focused on multinational mining companies headquartered in London and traded on the London Stock Exchange, some accused of damaging ecosystems, displacing residents and disrupting local economies around the world.

On April 17, just before the annual general shareholder meetings of mining giants Rio Tinto and Anglo American, Solly and a group of people impacted by the companies’ mines around the world visited the Church of England.

They asked church officials to pressure the companies to improve their labor and environmental practices, or risk divestment by the church’s fund. In 2010, the church pulled its investments from the London-based global mining company Vedanta Resources based on its record in India.

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Anglo American to spend $80 million advancing proposed Pebble Mine – by Laurel Andrews (Alaska Dispatch – April 22, 2013)

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/

The Pebble Partnership plans to spend $80 million this year on advancing its proposed mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay.

The proposed Pebble Mine, 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, is estimated to hold 81 billion pounds of copper, 107 million ounces of gold and 5 billion pounds of molybdenum, and is said to be one of the largest such deposits in the world. However, the location of the proposed massive open-pit mine — near the breeding grounds of the fertile Bristol Bay salmon fishery — has led to intense scrutiny by opponents of the mine who say it would damage salmon streams that are important both commercially and culturally to the region.

The Pebble Partnership is 50-50 venture between global mining companies Anglo American and Northern Dynasty. Last year, the Pebble Partnership spent $107 million on preparing the permit application for the proposed mine. To date, the partnership has spent $680 million steering the project toward development.

The $80 million spent this year will come from Anglo American, due to the way the joint venture is structured, said Mike Heatwole, Pebble Partnership spokesperson. This year’s funds will be spent with the goal of developing an overall project description and toward initiating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) permit process.

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Mining sector needs new inspiration – Cutifani – by Geoff Candy (Mineweb.com – April 22, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

In his first speech as CEO of Anglo American, Mark Cutifani lays out a number of the challenges facing his new charge and the rest of the mining sector.

GRONINGEN (MINEWEB) – New Anglo American CEO, Mark Cutifani, is not known for pulling his punches. And, his first speech as Anglo American CEO was no different.

Speaking at the group’s Annual General Meeting, Cutifani told Anglo American shareholders that with the group’s share price languishing compared to its peers, business as usual was no longer acceptable.

“As a major diversified company, we need a more focused articulation of the value proposition that will guide our strategic positioning,” Cutifani said, before adding that Anglo American (and the rest of the sector) need to look beyond the mining industry for inspiration.

“To be brutally frank, our industry lags the petroleum, manufacturing and aviation sectors and other more progressive and innovative heavy industry players in terms of operating practices – there is no reason why our industry should not use the best from all of these ‘restless innovators’.”

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Amplats, Minas Rio expected to be Cutifani’s biggest headaches at Anglo – by Leandi Kolver (April 19, 2013)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

Analysts in the South African mining industry believe that new Anglo American CEO Mark Cutifani’s biggest challenge might be platinum mining company Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), based on the recent volatility of the sector, plagued by violent strikes and uncertainty.

The significantly overbudget Minas Rio iron-ore project, in Brazil, is a close second. Cutifani replaced former Anglo American CEO Cynthia Carrol on April 3. Mining Weekly reported in January that Liberium Capital analyst Ben Davis had said that the challenges arising from the “structurally defunct” Amplats and the continuing capital cost increases at the Minas Rio project had no easy solutions.

South Africa’s Public Investment Corporation said that Anglo American’s “main issues” centred on capital allocation, project management and operational challenges, which, taking Cutifani’s experience into consideration, could be dealt with.

Amplats posted its first loss last year, with the loss partly stemming from flat metal prices and cost increases of more than 15% a year and from illegal strikes rooted in a turf war between members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union and the National Union of Mineworkers.

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Colombian miners hit out at Anglo American – by John Vidal (The Guardian – April 15, 2013)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

The joint owners of the Cerrejón opencast mine will be accused at its annual meeting of jeopardising the health of 13,000 people

Communities from Colombia, Mongolia, South Africa and the US will demonstrate in London this week against some of the world’s largest mining companies, which they say are devastating the health of people, widely polluting the environment and forcing communities to move.

Anglo American, joint owners of the giant Cerrejón opencast coal mine in northern Colombia with BHP Billiton and Xstrata, will be accused at its annual meeting on Friday of jeopardising the health of the 13,000 people who live or work close to the operation that provides coal for power stations in Britain and Europe.

“We have had to suffer the impacts of opencast coal mining for over 25 years now. Our communities have been gradually and systematically asphyxiated by the contamination caused by coal mining, our societies [have been] fractured,” said Julio Gomez, president of Fecodemigua, the Federation of Communities Displaced by Mining in La Guajira, in London.

Around 500m of the total estimated 5bn tonnes of coal have been mined from Cerrejón since it opened in 1985, but the largest mine in Latin America plans to increase production by 25% in the next three years.

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Sir Mark Moody-Stuart: “CEOs must listen and visibly engage” – Critical Resource – January 2013

Critical Resource specializes in political, sustainability and stakeholder risks facing natural resource investments. We advise senior executives and investors in some of the world’s largest companies. http://www.c-resource.com/

In a wide-ranging interview with Critical Resource, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart – former Chairman of Anglo American and Shell gives his top tips on managing stakeholder expectations, resource nationalism, and other social and political pressures facing resource firms.

CEOs should focus hard on engagement

CEOs need to be open and talk to people. They need to visibly engage and communicate both inside and outside the organisation. This is extremely important. First, CEOs have to listen and secondly, they need to be extremely clear. When a project opens, local people often hope to become wealthy and gain employment. It is important for companies to speak about the realities and explain what is really going to happen.

People need to be told early if they lack the education levels to fill jobs. Be clear about what jobs are likely to be available so as to ground expectations in reality. Companies then need to challenge themselves to raise education levels so that kids who are now eight can think about going to university when they are 18. They need to commit to creating a mechanism and to test progress towards that goal – consulting stakeholders on progress.

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Cutifani says to initially focus on [Anglo American] value creation – by Idéle Esterhuizen (MiningWeekly.com – April 3, 2013)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/home

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Diversified miner Anglo American’s new CEO Mark Cutifani has indicated that his initial focus would be to find ways to improve value creation within the company.

“I will look to start with the value proposition for being a major diversified [company]. I will look at the portfolio, the commodities we are in – do they make sense? Are they the right commodities for the future? The assets – are they competitive?…Should we be doing things differently to realise value?” he said during a video interview on his first day as CEO of the mining group.

Cutifani, who has mined on six continents in 25 countries and in 20 commodities and who succeeded Cynthia Carroll, indicated that he would be scrutinising the company’s balance sheet to determine whether it had the capacity to realise value and whether it was adequately operationally flexible.

A process of determining whether the right people were in the right positions to do the required work would also be undertaken.
Further, Cutifani said he would be looking into the company’s structures and systems, as the mining sector was lagging behind others in this regard.

“I would like to put those pieces together in that first three or four months…getting the major themes out there and understanding what we have to attack to really create value in the long term.

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Can Anglo American chief Mark Cutifani defuse explosive South African relations? – by Emma Rowley (The Telegraph – April 2013)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Among the thousands of visitors to the Vatican in January was one who, it is fair to say, was more focused on more earthly matters than many.

Mark Cutifani was on a mining-related mission ahead of his official start on Wednesday as chief executive of resource giant Anglo American.

He was meeting Cardinal Peter Turkson, the Ghanaian recently tipped as “Africa’s best hope for Pope”, for pointers on how to deal better with the various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) lobbying for local communities.

“What we wanted to do was listen to Cardinal Turkson’s view and what we were missing as miners,” Mr Cutifani said. “I said to him, ‘we don’t know how to engage those NGOs, can you help us understand where we might start the conversation… What we’re coming here to do is to listen and try to understand how we can engage in a different conversation as an industry’.”

If his trip to the Holy See may have smacked of desperate measures, well, these are desperate times. At FTSE 100 miner Anglo, Mr Cutifani faces the immediate and perilous task of overseeing the company’s plans to restructure its operations in the explosive South African mining belt.

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Russia, South Africa Seek to Create OPEC-Style Platinum Bloc – by Ilya Arkhipov & Franz Wild (Bloomberg.com – March 27, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Russia and South Africa, countries that hold about 80 percent of platinum group metal reserves, plan to set up an OPEC-type trading bloc to coordinate exports.

“It can be called an OPEC,” Russian Natural Resources Minister Sergey Donskoy said late yesterday in an interview in Durban. “Our goal is to coordinate our actions accordingly to expand the markets. The price depends on the structure of the market, and we will form the structure of the market.”

South Africa mines about 70 percent of the world’s platinum and Russia 40 percent of its palladium, a metal from the same group used to cut car pollution, Johnson Matthey Plc (JMAT) said in a 2012 report. Other nations would be able to join the group. The U.S., Zimbabwe and Canada are among producers of the metals. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is an oil cartel.

Platinum and palladium prices rose following yesterday’s comments by Donskoy. South Africa and Russia signed only a “framework” accord, he said, with details yet to be decided.

“We are now forming working groups to work out joint actions on this market,” Donskoy said. “There will be a meeting in the summer to discuss mechanisms in detail.”

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Anglo American is a South African company, Minerals Minister reminds new CEO – by Martin Creamer (MiningWeekly.com – March 22, 2013)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

“Mark, this Anglo American plc, it’s ours. It’s a South African company,” Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu reminded incoming Anglo American CEO Mark Cutifani at a Chamber of Mines function in his honour.

“We hope you’ll make sure that it remains South African,” the Minister added. Her comments follow those of African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, who last month emphasised the South African roots of Anglo American and lamented reference to it as a British company.

Mantashe contended that allowing companies to migrate to global stock exchanges had impacted negatively on South Africa’s own exchange and denied the country part of its economic heritage.

Shabangu also raised the point of regret by some of Anglo American being allowed to domicile in a London listing: “When we speak, sometimes people say that we made a mistake to allow Anglo to list in London. Well, because it has happened, we’re not going to pursue that now, but what we want to see is Anglo continuing to brand itself as a South African company,” she said, adding that, with the appointment of Cutifani, the country was positive that would happen.

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Anglo CEO’s plan to reignite mining – by Rob Rose (South Africa – Business Day – March 17, 2013)

http://www.bdlive.co.za/

MARK Cutifani, who will step into the CEO’s seat at Anglo American in the next few weeks, said that, by confronting seven issues that spook foreign investors, South Africa’s mining industry can “turn the dial” and begin growing again.

Speaking at a dinner in Parktown, Johannesburg, on Thursday night, organised by the Chamber of Mines and attended by Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu, Mr Cutifani said 2013 represents a “starting point for a new future for the mining industry”.

South Africa’s mining industry has flagged in recent years, battling a stream of bad news. This included the Marikana shootings last year and former ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema’s campaign for mines to be nationalised.

It meant that while the JSE’s all-share index climbed 60% from 2008 onwards, South Africa’s mining firms did not grow at all. Mr Cutifani pointed out that “in real terms, when you take into account inflation, that means we’ve destroyed about 30% value”.

Mr Cutifani, an Australian mining engineer, will take charge of Anglo American at its London head office. He has successfully led AngloGold Ashanti for the last six years. During that time, the company was the best-performing miner in terms of share-price growth and return on capital.

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Profits Drop at Big Five Miners – by Reuters (New York Times – February 12, 2013)

http://www.nytimes.com/

MELBOURNE — Global mining companies are set to unveil their biggest profit decreases in more than a decade and are clearing the decks with multibillion-dollar write-downs on poorly performing assets as they bring in new chief executives.

A sharp drop in commodity prices is likely to have driven down profits for the second half of last year by 40 percent to 50 percent at the top five mining companies when compared with the same period in 2011, forcing them to shelve expansion projects, slash costs and sell assets.

For the top three — BHP Billiton; Vale, based in Brazil; and Rio Tinto — iron ore earnings are likely to cushion losses in coal, aluminum and nickel for the period.

Chief executives are being punished for splurging in the boom years on projects and acquisitions instead of rewarding shareholders more generously, and investors are calling for Rio Tinto and BHP to rethink their policies.

One of the 10 largest shareholders in BHP and Rio Tinto’s Australian-traded stocks said his fund had been pressing both to pay out more of their profit to shareholders. The shareholder, Ross Barker, the managing director of Australian Foundation Investment, said that the companies were not paying higher dividends to shareholders so they could use the funds for investments that would deliver attractive returns.

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With blood in the water, mining’s great white shark is on the hunt – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – February 23, 2013)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

ROME — Beheadings are putting the mining world through something akin to the French Revolution. Mining bosses who landed their jobs in the bubble era – 2006 and 2007 – or did their signature top-of-the-market deals in those years are being fired with alacrity. Or they are announcing their retirements, much to the delight of shareholders grown weary of the value destruction borne of stunningly overpriced takeovers and soaring costs.

The changing of the guard started in the autumn, when Cynthia Carroll said she would quit as chief executive officer of Anglo American. Not long after, BHP Billiton, the world’s top mining company, revealed that it would replace Marius Kloppers, the man who made a wrong bet on shale gas and botched the attempted takeover of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (the new CEO is Scotsman Andrew Mackenzie). Last month, it was Rio Tinto boss Tom Albanese’s turn. The biggest sinner of them all, he was knocked off for his boneheaded purchase of Montreal’s Alcan in 2007 for $37-billion (U.S.), most of which has now been written off.

Canadian mining bosses have been frog-marched to the guillotine too – Tye Burt of Kinross Gold and Aaron Regent of Barrick Gold were two of the late 2012 victims. A year earlier, Roger Agnelli was pushed out of Vale, the Brazilian company that paid an eye-watering price for Canada’s Inco.

The last man standing is Ivan Glasenberg, the Glencore International CEO who is about to become the head of the mining and trading colossus to be formed by the merger of Glencore and Xstrata, the Anglo-Swiss miner that owns Falconbridge.

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Cynthia Carroll: Rough ride ends for the ‘outsider’ at Anglo American – by Tom Bawden (The Independent – February 10, 2013)

http://www.independent.co.uk/

She suffered sexism in the City, but there were highs

In one of the most infamous business interviews of recent times, Anglo American’s Cynthia Carroll was written off by a former deputy chairman of her company in a few harsh words. “This woman’s hopeless,” he said.

As chief executive of South Africa’s Anglo American, which is listed in London, Carroll is the ultimate outsider doing what has been dubbed the “toughest job in mining”.

So, in some ways at least, it’s probably safe to assume she is looking fondly towards life after Friday, when she is scheduled to make her final public appearance for the company. She announces annual results for the sixth and last time before stepping down from the helm on 3 April.

Carroll was Anglo American’s first female – and first non-South African – chief executive. If that wasn’t enough, she came to the top job from outside Anglo American, where the tradition had previously been to hand the position to a well-groomed insider.

She was finally forced to resign in October after months of pressure from shareholders, who are likely to feel vindicated by the latest set of results.

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