in brief in the news By David McKay
MINING
Calderon at the helm of AngloGold Ashanti
AngloGold Ashanti’s newly-appointed CEO talks to finweek about his strengths and what he plans on doing within the first four months on the job.
Photo: Gallo/Getty Images | CNBC | sieberana.com
a
t 61 years Alberto Calderon, AngloGold Ashanti’s new CEO, is almost the same age as Nick Holland who, at 62, stepped down from Gold Fields to comply with the firm’s mandatory retirement age. Calderon, though, wasn’t in a retirement frame of mind. “I spoke to friends and I knew that I did not want to be a non-executive professional. That would be too boring. I wanted to be busy and see what lands,” he says in an interview with finweek shortly after the announcement of his appointment, which will be effective 1 September. “This appeared,” he says of AngloGold. “A friend told me, why don’t you look at it.” And that’s how some top executive placements start, apparently; in a world where information flow is dizzyingly sophisticated, there’s nothing like a word of mouth recommendation. Calderon had recently resigned as CEO of Orica, a large Australian explosives company. Before that, he ran a career as one of BHP’s “man for all seasons”, running its aluminium and nickel divisions as well as leading corporate development and its one-third stake in Cerrejon, the coal mine in Colombia, the country from which Calderon hails. According to him, AngloGold is something of a “fixer-upper”; one of those old-money, frayed-atthe-edges property gems you find on a lazy Sunday
12
finweek 23 July 2021
Alberto Calderon
Tyler Broda RBC Capital Markets analyst
René Hochreiter Analyst for Noah Capital
drive through the suburbs. Well, he didn’t exactly say it like that. His actual words were: “I read analyst reports, years of them and I saw this company was trading at a massive discount to fair value compared to other companies. I thought I could help.” In the estimation of one Australian portfolio manager, Alberto Calderon has an old-school approach: a calm, steady, “by the book” way of going about things. He also hinted he was very corporate; in fact, very “Anglo American” of yesteryear. That may exactly be what the gold producer needs right now. As Calderon says: “I am convinced that every large company needs a CEO for its times.” In the view of Calderon, what AngloGold needs is “… more international experience, more commercial, and a track record with mining company delivery”. AngloGold has been left twisting in the wind since its former CEO, Kelvin Dushnisky, surprisingly resigned in August 2020. The interim CEO, Christine Ramon, has been managing the company, and her return as CFO is viewed positively. It will provide continuity and “a quick ramp-up with the management team”, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Tyler Broda. But until a permanent CEO was appointed, questions about AngloGold’s long-term direction have been omnipresent in everything the group says and does. These are not questions about www.fin24.com/finweek
