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How Anglo found Carroll
Bruce Whitfield
Posted: Wed, 01 Nov 2006
[miningmx.com] -- ANGLO AMERICAN chairman Sir Mark Moody-Stuart insists that the appointment of a new CEO to head the global mining conglomerate from April next year won’t cause it to alter its stated strategy of selling off non-core assets and refocusing the business.
But it would be naďve to assume that Anglo’s board is expecting the appointment of Cynthia Carroll, only the sixth CEO in its 87-year history, to produce more of the same.
The decision to appoint a woman, an American and a company outsider is a radical break from tradition and sends a very clear signal that change is in the air.
“It’s a creative and a courageous decision,” says Johann Redlinghuys, partner at international executive search agency Heidrick & Struggles in Johannesburg. But he says international failure rates among executives brought into companies from overseas are considerably higher than
those appointments made internally.
Anglo won’t disclose who was on its shortlist of potential candidates, but the chairman says internal and external candidates were considered in an “extremely thorough search”. The market had speculated that Philippe Varin, head of Corus, or Mike Salamon, a highly regarded BHP Billiton director whose tenure at that company has ended, would be front-runners. Whether or not they were approached is unknown.
“(We wanted) somebody who would continue the process of change and transformation we have seen at Anglo in the past few years. Continue it, accelerate it, deepen it,” Moody-Stuart says, adding: “What we need to do is use the external experience – the fresh look – to see whether there are ways we can improve our delivery.”
It’s also worth noting that the group wasn’t specifically seeking an individual with a mining and metals background, though Carroll is a trained geologist. Instead, says Moody-Stuart, the group wanted
someone with international experience, with business contacts in many countries and who had worked in a capital-intensive industry with a long investment cycle.
Countless studies on succession at senior levels in companies show that the process is disruptive to an organisation – external appointments are even more so. According to recent research in the US, most firms prefer to select successors from inside their organisations to avoid disruption – but external successors are often brought into companies that require radical change.
Boards that appoint external candidates expect them to create disruption and will generally give them the mandate to objectively assess strategy and implement widespread organisational change.
Carroll is the first woman to become CEO of a
top 40-listed company on the JSE and also joins one of London’s smallest clubs as one of only three female CEOs of a FTSE 100 firm.
“The world we’re moving to is far more right brain than left brain and women tend to be far more effective in that area,” says Redlinghuys, who states that “softer” issues, such as governance, are being seen as increasingly important in business. “That could very well be the opening of the door for many women who have missed out on top appointments in the past.”
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