[miningmx.com] – ALWYN Pretorius, chief operating officer at Harmony Gold, has resigned from the company less than a month after the firm’s CEO, Graham Briggs, announced plans for his retirement.
Harmony Gold spokeswoman, Marian van der Walt, confirmed Pretorius would leave the employ of the company adding, however, it was “nothing sinister”. Pretorius will remain with the company until November.
“These are challenging assets that we have and being the COO of Harmony is literally a 24/7 job. So he decided to leave for personal reasons,” said Van der Walt. Pretorius has been at Harmony in various capacities for over 10 years.
Van der Walt added that Pretorius was supported by three regional managers who would continue to assist with the operational management of the company. Nonetheless his resignation represents another interesting twist for Harmony.
The company has been increasingly linked with corporate action with Neal Froneman, CEO of Sibanye Gold, repeating today that gold sector consolidation of the type in which companies as a whole were involved was “inevitable”.
Harmony is seen as the most vulnerable to gold price weakness, a factor that has seen the firm’s stock price fall 25% in the last 30 days. Whilst this is not out of kilter with share price weakness in other gold firms, it does make Harmony decidedly cheap with a market value of just over R5bn.
There have also been changes in behind-the-scenes shareholder activity with Allan Gray increasing its stake in the firm to just over 15%. Now roughly 40% of Harmony Gold is held by three shareholders, including long-term backer, African Rainbow Minerals.
Van der Walt said there was no immediate plans to replace Pretorius until the company had appointed a CEO. “It’s quite possible that the new CEO will have his own plans in terms of appointing the COO,” she said.
