Fred Roux tells of his sacking at Implats

| Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:52 In an interview on SAfm @ 18:15 on 23 October 2009

[miningmx.com] -- THE decision by the Impala Platinum board to remove him as chairman came as an unpleasant surprise, said Fred Roux.

Roux criticised the performance of the world's second-largest platinum producer in Impala's annual report and was said to have a poor relationship with CEO David Brown, cited in a letter by Niall Carroll, chief executive of the Royal Bafokeng, Impala's largest shareholder.

"It was not the event relating to his [Brown's] relationship as implied by Niall, his relationship with the CEO of Mvela. That was definitely not the issue that caused this fallout," Roux said on SAfm Market Update.

Roux said there was an "us and them" relationship between the executive and non-executive directors on the board. The issue came to the fore during one board dinner.

"During the course of one such dinner the issue came up about the relationship between the non-executives and the executives, and the fact that the executives saw some of the non-executives as being too intrusive, too questioning of some of the matters within the company, and that really created a lot of discussion," he said.

Roux stood by his criticism of the company in the annual report.

"I certainly believe I have a role in telling shareholders things the way they are, not the way that they want to hear them," he said.

"And in the past year I had a particular concern, and the concern was that the Implat's performance in the past year was not up to par. If you look over ten years, Implats has been a superb investment by any standard - as good as BHP... But in the past year it has really lost ground relative to other resource companies," he said.

Asked if those comments led to his sacking as Impala chairman, Roux said: "I don't think that is the only reason. It is a number of small incidents. But I suspect that is something that was not well received by the executives, and so it's not impossible that other minor incidents may have contributed to this flare-up that ultimately occurred."

Roux said he'd had received a sound evaluation of his performance as chairman in April this year.

"I was evaluated as chairman and on the specific question relating to David Brown, my relationship with the CEO, 12 responses from others except me, indicated a - and they were all the same, and this was weird -consistently good relationship with the CEO," he said.

"Now, between April this year and yesterday or the day before yesterday, those very same executives I am told voted all unanimously for my dismissal," he said.

"So my performance had declined over a matter of a few months from something second-highest to something which is unacceptable. Now, I don't see how that can happen, and I think there is some sort of unfairness involved there, and perhaps there is a case," he added.

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