Sibanye-Stillwater appoints Richard Stewart as CEO-designate

SIBANYE-Stillwater confirmed on Thursday its founding CEO of 13 years standing Neal Froneman was set to retire this year. He will be replaced by Richard Stewart, chief regional officer of Southern African operations who will now serve as CEO-designate.Froneman (65) will formerly step down from the company in September. Stewart’s appointment as CEO-designate is effective from March 1. He will carry those duties in additon to his current role.The group said it had sought candidates from both within and outside the company, but landed on StewartSibanye-Stillwater chairman Vicent Maphai said in a statement that while Froneman still had “the same enthusiasm for what he does, and has lost none of his drive”, he wished to spend more time with his family and pursue his other interests.“Neal leaves behind a proud legacy at Sibanye-Stillwater and in the South African mining industry, which is testament to his strategic vision and inspirational leadership,” said Maphai.Stewart joined the company in 2014 where he was responsible for “jointly charting and implementing the group’s strategy,” said Sibanye-Stillwater. In addition to his operating roles, he was executive vice president of business development for the group contributing to move into platinum group metals.Asked to comment earlier this month, Froneman told Miningmx he did not plan to “spend the rest of my life working”. The company has a mandatory retirement age of 65 years for executives which Froneman has reached, said Sibanye-Stillwater.Froneman founded Sibanye-Stillwater, then called Sibanye Gold, in 2013 after taking over Gold Fields’s South African mines Driefontein and Kloof.Making light of Gold Fields’s difficulties with the operations at the time, Froneman cut costs, improved margins, and used them as a foundation for an aggressive acquisition spree in platinum group metals starting with the R450m purchase of the Everest mine from Northam Platinum.Froneman went on to acquire some of the Rustenburg operations of Anglo American Platinum as well as Lonmin, then struggling to stay afloat – a deal that paid back to investors within months of acquisition. But the firm’s biggest deal was the R30bn acquisition of Stillwater Mining, a US mine, in 2016. It called for a R10.3bn rights issue – one of the largest orchestrated on the JSE, and gave birth to Sibanye-Stillwater.Latterly, Froneman has taken Sibanye-Stillwater into critical minerals, lithium especially, announcing the purchase of a stake in the Keliber Lithium project in Finland with the government of Finland as joint venture partner. Another lithium project in the US, known as Rhyolite Ridge, is also being evaluated.Shares in the company increased from R23 in 2020 to R73/share a year later. Since then the stock has fallen under pressure, largely precipitated by the drastic decine in PGM prices. Although affecting all miners in the sector, Sibanye-Stillwater was particularly hard hit. It said last year production from its flagship Stillwater mine would be halved to about 200,000 oz of platinum and palladium in order to stay afloat.Froneman is a titan of South Africa’s mining sector having previously introduced Uranium One to the South African market whilst also working for JCI, Gold Fields and Harmony Gold where much of his no-frills to mining approach was cultured.The post Sibanye-Stillwater appoints Richard Stewart as CEO-designate appeared first on Miningmx.Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com