When AngloGold and Ashanti Goldfields Corporation eight years ago completed a merger that had been in the works for nearly a year earlier, the stage was immediately set for the birth of one of the continent’s most dominant market forces. That was on 26th April 2004.
Barely four months later, the new company sold its Union Reef Gold Mine in the Northern Territory of Australia, and a month later, followed it up with another sale, this time of the Freda-Rebecca Gold Mine in Zimbabwe.
On 1st October 2007, AngloGold Ashanti CEO, Bobby Godsell made way for Mark Cutifani, who had earlier been appointed a director of the company on 17th September of the same year. Russell Edey, chairman since 2002, was not replaced until much later in May 2010, when Tito Mboweni acceded chairmanship of the company.
Two years later in January 2009, AngloGold Ashanti sold its 33 per cent stake in the Boddington Gold Mine in Australia to Newmont Mining for US$ 1.0 billion. Similar sales were to take place later, as its Tau Lekoa Gold Mine in South Africa was sold to Buffelsfontein Gold Mines Limited in February 2009, with ownership being transferred on 1 August 2010. Two months later, it announced the elimination of its last hedge book.
Under erstwhile CEO Bobby Godsell, AngloGold Ashanti had hedged 11.3 million ounces of gold, as at early 2008. But under its current CEO, the figure gradually shrank to 3.22 million. In October 2010, the leftover amount was paid off with US$2.63 billion, or US$1,300 per ounce of gold.
In 2008, AngloGold produced 4.98 million ounces of gold from its operations, estimated to be seven per cent of the global production. In 2009, the company’s gold output dropped to 4.6 million ounces.
In 2011, it had in its employ 61,242 people, a marked advancement from 2010 when it had 62,046 employees; produced 4.33Moz of gold; generated $6.6bn in gold income, excluding joint ventures; and recorded capital expenditure of $1.5bn. As at 31st December 2011, it had an attributable Ore Reserve of 75.6Moz and an attributable Mineral Resource of 230.9Moz
Headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, AngloGold Ashanti’s primary listing is on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). But It is also listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the Ghana Stock Exchange (GhSE) and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).
At the end of December 2011, the group had 382,242,343 ordinary shares in issue. The market capitalisation at year-end was $16.2bn. Around 98 per cent of the group’s ordinary shares are considered to be free float, with 1.67 per cent held by the Government of Ghana. AngloGold Ashanti delisted from Euronext Paris on 23rd December 2011 and from Euronext Brussels on 30th December 2011.
Rated by African Business magazine as the third-biggest quoted firm in West Africa, AngloGold Ashanti Limited is now a global gold producer with 21 operations 20 operations in 10 countries on four continents, as well as several exploration programmes in both the established and new gold producing regions of the world.
Despite its huge financial successes, AngloGold Ashanti has had its travails. Frequent fatalities to staff in its operations have earned it widespread international opprobrium, including the ignoble award of the world’s Most Irresponsible Company at the 2011 Public Eye Awards hosted by the Berne Declaration and Greenpeace in Davos, Switzerland.
The cheery news, however, is the attention that the issue has been receiving from CEO Mark Cutifani, who has a personal aim of reducing the number of fatalities in the company to zero by 2015, and who has publicly admitted that “living with fatalities in the industry is his greatest disappointment.”
