Shortly after taking the reins at the miner, CEO Kelvin Dushnisky made it clear that the group intends to divest from its SA assets in the yellow metal. He aims to have the deal completed soon.
angloGold Ashanti’s decision to sell its last remaining SA gold assets comes just over six months into CEO Kelvin Dushnisky’s tenure at the company since succeeding Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan. In other words, he made his mind up pretty quickly about where the group stood on SA.
“The industry generally in SA has not chosen the right time,” says Dushnisky about when assets ought to be sold. “They squeeze out the last ounce of value. Why then would someone buy an asset?” he asks finweek in an interview shortly after the group announced it would sell Mponeng which, with its nearby surface operations, is set to produce about 360 000 ounces of gold this year based on the annualised first-quarter numbers.
Quite how this divestment will proceed is hard to know, however. Dushnisky has targeted deal completion by the year-end – a target that has some analysts doubtful. At the time of writing, there are no obvious buyers except, perhaps, Harmony Gold which has already spent $300m buying Moab Khotsong from AngloGold in 2017.
Harmony declined to comment on market speculation it might be the natural buyer. It is worth noting, though, that it has R4.6bn in net debt at the last count and is facing questions about how to fund its 50% portion of Wafi-Golpu, a project in Papua New Guinea that is, for all intents and purposes, its future.
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