[miningmx.com] — THE appointment of Philippe Mellier – the first outsider to run De Beers as CEO – was made following a deliberate decision to search outside the group, according to De Beers chairperson Nicky Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer told Miningmx: “Jonathan (Oppenheimer) and I started off by looking inside De Beers where we identified some very credible candidates, but we had the feeling this was the time to do something different.
“We felt we needed to compare the internal candidates with those available in the outside world. When we sat down with Philippe, we immediately knew this man was a very serious candidate.’
Oppenheimer is the first to acknowledge that Mellier does not have the kind of experience many observers might feel is required to run De Beers.
He said: “He has no mining experience, no experience of diamonds and no experience of southern Africa which, you may say, is a bad place to start from.
“But the CEO of De Beers has to be a very unusual person. You want someone with skills in understanding major capital expenditure programmes, and you also want a person with technical skills so the engineers can’t pull the wool over his eyes.
“On the other hand, that person also has to understand marketing and what people are going to want in the generations ahead.’
Oppenheimer believed Mellier’s extensive experience in the automobile industry as well as his latest position running Alstom Transport made him well suited to the De Beers’ requirements.
He said: “In the motor car business you must have a tremendous knowledge of what people are going to want and what they are going to aspire to.
“You have to decide what kind of car to build that they will buy in five or seven years’ time, so he has a considerable knowledge of the way people think and aspire.
“Philippe is an engineer and at Alstom he had 7,000 engineers reporting to him. He has been in charge of very substantial projects plus has had a lot of experience in selling to governments and government/private sector joint ventures.
“All of this said to us this is a man with skills not specifically orientated to De Beers, but not completely dissimilar to what were required.
“Jonathan and I decided he would bring tremendous excitement and change to De Beers.”
Oppenheimer added that, at Alstom, ” Philippe took a division – the transport division – that was approximately the size of De Beers and was in real trouble.
“The changes he made have resulted in the transport division becoming this year the most profitable at Alstom.
” In France, you have to give three months’ notice and Alstom are making him work every day of it, which is an indication of how much they value him. He will only be with us from the early part of July.’
Turning to his own future at De Beers, Oppenheimer said he intended to be around “for the foreseeable future’.
He said: “The relationship between the chairperson and the CEO within De Beers is not quite like that in some public companies.
“I am full-time at De Beers and much more of an executive chairperson and, with Philippe coming in, I have an important role to play with him in the learning process. He and I will spend a lot of time talking to each other.’
Asked about his decision to resign from the Anglo American board, Oppenheimer said: “I had been on the board of Anglo for 37 years and boy, that’s a long time for anyone to be on a board. I took the mental decision (to stand down) when I turned 65 and it was no more than that.
“I was both an asset and a liability to Anglo. I was an asset because my name is Oppenheimer and there was a connection to the founding family, and because I have a long memory.
“But I was also a liability to Anglo because of that memory. It’s too long a memory and Anglo has changed so much since the time I joined it as a 21-year-old. It really needs younger people who are in touch with today’s world.
“I think they have some great people on the board and I think Anglo is doing fantastically well. My decision to step down was no more than my belief that you do not want to overstay your welcome.’
Regarding market speculation that Anglo might buy out the Oppenheimer family stake in De Beers, Oppenheimer replied: “Not that I have heard. I think that’s more a case of you guys in the media busy writing columns about it.
“I have no feel for anything like that in my immediate future which is what, five years, but who knows? The world changes very quickly. “
