Bumpy debut for Anglo’s new CEO
Spiralling inflation and a rocky production quarter have rubbed off some of the Cutifani gloss. But all is not lost
For a revered communicator, it seemed odd that former Anglo American CEO Mark Cutifani would put the skids under his successor, Duncan Wanblad, by announcing on LinkedIn this month that he had taken up a new position as “consultant” to the group. As explained by Anglo spokesperson Sibusiso Tshabalala, however, the role is but a previously announced, two-month handover, scheduled to end June 30. What reporters may have seen on social media was merely an automated status update.
The last thing Wanblad needs now is a ghost of past bounty doing the haunts. That’s because questions abound as to how he will fare after Cutifani’s nine-year stint as CEO of the group, remembered for its final and very successful three years, rather than the six years of hard slog that preceded them.
Planted among a melee of journalists at a cocktail party on the sidelines of the Mining Indaba in Cape Town this month, Wanblad cut an amiable figure, though he was somewhat at pains to sustain the Cutifani swagger.
The event was off the record, but some personal details emerged. Wanblad is a season ticket holder at Watford Football Club, recently relegated from the UK top division. More importantly, he has a deep affiliation with mining: his father, Graham, was a JCI Mining executive and his grandfather also worked in mining.
Wanblad grew up on the premises of JCI’s Consolidation Murchison mine in Gravelotte, Limpopo, where antimony was
mined as well as gold. So worried was his mother about this somewhat feral upbringing that she insisted he develop his English as much as the Afrikaans Wanblad says is his first language.
Of course, in the rarefied air of the Anglo boardroom the lingua franca is to do with things like return on capital employed. That is where Wanblad will be examined most closely. The context in which he has started life as Anglo’s CEO has been mixed.
Anglo’s first-quarter production results were poor, dotted with missed targets. Cost pressures also weighed heavily on the group. But Anglo nimbly got ahead of the news, which is likely to be dominated throughout the year by inflation-fuelled margin pressure. Unlike rivals BHP and Rio Tinto, Anglo adjusted its cost estimates upwards and lowered production guidance.
Analysts acknowledged Anglo’s transparency. “While Anglo optically stands out as disappointing, we believe it is also preemptively guiding to the cost inflation realities facing the global mining industry,” says Dominic O’Kane, an analyst for JPMorgan Cazenove. Inclement weather, labour and supply chain disruption and for