www.miningmx.com | gold_silver Swanepoel would form new company

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Bernard Swanepoel

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� JSE:HARMONY GOLD MINING COMPANY LIMITED:
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Swanepoel would form new company
Allan Seccombe
Posted: Fri, 26 Oct 2007

[miningmx.com] -- BERNARD Swanepoel, the former CEO of Harmony Gold, raised the possibility of helping build a company again, but it won't be in a leadership role and most certainly not a large, listed entity.

Since his sudden and completely unexpected resignation in August this year, Swanepoel has been steady in saying he�s unlikely to puts himself in such a position again.

�I�ve had enough offers put to me to know that I�m not going to be the CEO of another big company,� he said at a breakfast organised for the South African AIDS orphans charity NOAH.

I�ve not made enough money to retire

However, he said he�d been asked a couple of days ago whether he would head another company and after replying that he wouldn�t he�d since rethought his stance.

�I�ve not made enough money to retire, but I have enough to be flexible in deciding what to do,� he said.

Using a rugby analogy, pertinent because South Africa has just won the World Cup, he said: �I�m not the captain or the flyhalf, but I might become involved in building another company.�

Swanepoel was back to his usual ebullient form during his half hour presentation, the first since his resignation. He kicked off by jokingly welcoming those present to Harmony�s September quarter results.

Referring to the 25 acquisitions Harmony made under his tenure, he said: �Hi, I�m Bernard Swanepoel and I�m addicted to acquisitions.�

There was, however, a darker side to his presentation in which imparted the lessons he�d learnt at the helm of Harmony. He spared few from his very pointed barbs, with journalists, fund managers, consultants, bankers, financiers, fund managers and analysts all coming in for a kicking.

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It was the media in particular that seemed to be the singular biggest irritant for the man who built Harmony from a single asset company to the world�s fifth largest gold company.

Harmony, which had started a process of selling its marginal assets before Swanepoel left, faces a number of options in its future, with one of them becoming a smaller, quality operator, he said.

He argued that it would be good for the South African mining industry to undergo a major leadership change, with younger people with fresh ideas taking over.

In a way, those changes have already started. AngloGold Ashanti CEO and gold sector stalwart Bobby Godsell has stepped down in a well-planned exit. At Anglo Platinum, Ralph Havenstein resigned suddenly under pressure from majority shareholder Anglo American over the company�s poor safety record.

Swanepoel sees himself playing a role in adapting some of the tried and tested methods of South African mining houses in the past to use to grow the industry into the future.

�If we want to reinvent South Africa�s mines, we need to use the clever methods of the past,� he said. �I want to help younger people take assets to great value.� Swanepoel is 46 years old, himself a relative youngster himself in the global mining industry.

He argued strongly that unbundling of gold companies was inevitable because shareholders and financiers didn�t like the broad range of assets within single companies.

�These very big gold companies have become illogical entities and they are not serving the purpose for which they were put together and they will be unbundled,� he said.

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