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(HERALD) Anglo American complies with BEE

Anglo American complies with BEE
Bloomberg.

JOHANNESBURG. Anglo American plc, the biggest investor in South African mining, completed more than 50 billion rand (US$6,4 billion) of transactions last year to comply with laws seeking to redress apartheid’s inequalities. "No other South African company has undertaken black economic empowerment transactions on such a wide format in such a short period," Philip Baum, chief executive officer of Anglo’s ferrous metals and industries unit, told reporters in Johannesburg yesterday.

Under South African law, mining companies in the country must sell at least 26 percent of their assets to black investors by 2014 to help make up for discrimination during apartheid. Black employees should occupy 40 percent of management positions by 2009. Forty-two percent of Anglo-American’s management is made up of South Africans who were disadvantaged during apartheid, Baum said. The company recognises more should be done to ensure management is "representative of the country as a whole," he added. Anglo has sold stakes in its South African platinum, coal, diamond and paper units to black investors and helped boost black ownership of the nation’s biggest iron-ore mine. "Most of the big flagship deals are now completed," Kuseni Dlamini, the head of Anglo American South Africa, said in an interview in Johannesburg today. "`Our main area of focus now is to drive internal transformation internationally and diversify the management team in South Africa." Founded by Ernest Oppenheimer in 1917 in Johannesburg to exploit the world’s biggest gold field, Anglo grew to become South Africa’s biggest company during white rule as sanctions against apartheid limited its ability to expand outside the country. In 1999, it moved its headquarters to London. — Bloomberg.

Labels: ANGLO-AMERICAN, BEE

posted by MrK @ 9:44 PM