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Jonah’s kiss & tell Posted: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 [miningmx.com] -- BOBBY Godsell wanted to quit AngloGold Ashanti in 2003 in favour of a career in academia. Gold Fields wanted to merge with Ashanti Goldfields in 1998. And in a fragment of corporate history that has current resonance, Ashanti Goldfields wanted to take over the platinum mines of Britain’s Lonmin before a hedging crisis in 1999 almost bankrupted the Ghanaian company. These are some of the squibs contained in a biography of Sam Jonah, the Ghana-born mining executive who recently resigned his executive duties at AngloGold Ashanti to pursue his own business interests. Jonah has since taken numerous non-executive positions (including Anglo Platinum, Equinox Minerals, Standard Bank, Moto Goldmines, Equator and AngloGold Ashanti). Sam Jonah and the Remaking of Ashanti somewhat sympathetically traces his career from 1949 to his knighthood in June 2003. Described by biographer AA Taylor as “a shovel boy” who became president of an international gold company, the story isn’t without intrigue. For example, take the recounting of a meeting between Jonah, mining entrepreneur Algy Cluff (founder of Cluff Mining, which became Ridge Mining) and Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe in 1996. Cluff, who owned 2% of his firm Cluff Resources, had been the subject of a hostile takeover by Jonah’s Ashanti Goldfields. One of the prizes of the takeover was the Freda Rebecca mine in Zimbabwe, the country’s largest. Already showing some of the signs of his later deterioration, Mugabe is described as “wild with rage” because he believed Cluff had greedily sold out to Jonah, not understanding that many other shareholders had first agreed to sell their shares.Free news alerts: click here to
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