Briggs to Keep Harmony Helm as Miner Revives
By Charlotte Mathews
03 Jan 2008 at 09:48 AM GMT-05:00
resourceinvestor.com
JOHANNESBURG (Business Day) -- Greater certainty about Harmony Gold Mining’s [NYSE:HMY; JSE:HAR] future emerged yesterday when its board confirmed Graham Briggs as CEO with effect from 1 January.
Briggs, who has acted as CEO since Bernard Swanepoel’s departure in August last year, was selected from 36 potential candidates and a short list of four.
Harmony stock dived from R80.60 ($11.79) the day before Swanepoel’s resignation to below R64.
It has remained in a R65-R75 ($9.50-$10.96) range for the past two months, defying the 22% rise in the rand gold price between August and the end of last month.
The shares were trading 1.2% lower at R69.61 ($10.18) at midday yesterday, despite a 0.8% rise in the rand gold price to R185,213 ($27,076) per kilogram.
Harmony chairman Patrice Motsepe said the board was unanimous about Briggs’s appointment.
“He has been overseeing the introduction of the Harmony ‘back to basics’ management style and has done a great job. Harmony is on its way to being the globally competitive and profitable company that we know it can be.”
Coronation Fund Managers investment analyst Duane Cable said Briggs’s appointment was no surprise to the investment community and added some certainty to Harmony’s future.
In the past few months Briggs had started to deliver on some of the objectives he had set when appointed as acting CEO, including finalising the sale of uranium assets and selling Mount Magnet in Australia.
Briggs, 51, graduated from the University of Natal with a Bachelor of Science degree (Hons) summa cum laude in geology. He started his mining career as a geologist at Buffelsfontein gold mine and has also worked at West Rand Consolidated, Grootvlei and Beatrix. He was appointed the new business manager at Harmony 12 years ago and began Harmony’s acquisition strategy. He was appointed managing director of Harmony Australia two years ago.
In the group’s latest annual report, Briggs detailed priority areas that management was addressing, including control of costs, particularly on capital expenditure, overheads and services; bringing the group’s growth projects on stream; cleaning up the company structure; converting mining licences; and strengthening the executive team.
He said yesterday that some of the strategic goals he outlined in September had already been achieved, such as the sale of part of the Randfontein uranium assets to the Pamodzi Resources Fund announced last month, realising $252 million.
Harmony also said last month that it had converted all its old-order mining rights to new-order rights and started to execute them.
Briggs said Harmony’s team could not manage the group’s share price but they could manage the company to the best of their ability and hoped the share price would respond. |
