Tom Albanese named Vedanta chief executive

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Tom Albanese named Vedanta chief executive

Last updated: March 6, 2014 6:22 pm
Tom Albanese named Vedanta chief executive
By Andy Sharman and James Wilson in London and James Crabtree in Mumbai

Tom Albanese has been appointed chief executive of Vedanta Resources in a high-profile return to the helm of a global mining group a year after he quit as boss of Rio Tinto.
At Rio Tinto, Mr Albanese became a victim of the downturn in mining that claimed the heads of several leading executives in the industry, including Cynthia Carroll at Anglo American and Marius Kloppers at BHP Billiton.

He stepped down in January last year after Rio announced a sharp writedown on one of his key deals: the 2011 purchase of Riversdale’s coal assets in Mozambique. The acquisition was one of two ill-timed deals that he oversaw, alongside the $38bn cash purchase of Alcan in 2007.
Mr Albanese has been working with Vedanta since September as chairman of Vedanta Resources Holding, a subsidiary of the Indian resources group, although he did not sit on the board of the main London-listed company.

Anil Agarwal, Vedanta’s founding billionaire who still owns most of the company, will remain executive chairman of the company, raising questions about the degree of control Mr Albanese will have. He succeeds MS Mehta, who will retire at the end of March.
“This is a CEO role but Anil will be in that executive chairman role when it comes to M&A and strategy,” Mr Albanese said. “This is a business that wants to grow. The chairman and I have a very clear understanding of our vision for the business . . . We want to use this partnership between the two of us to make this business improve.”
Analysts at Citigroup said Vedanta had been perceived by the market as an Indian-centric company and the appointment of Mr Albanese “should help to globalise the business and remove this perception”.
But they added: “A key concern . . . will be whether Mr Albanese would have enough powers, given the controlling stake held by the Agarwal family. It is a step change for the leadership to be handed to someone outside the group, and the market is likely to wait and see if the new CEO is provided with enough cards to play.”
Mr Albanese is expected to have a more operational focus and he faces immediate challenges in turning round the fortunes of the complex mining and resources group. Shares in Vedanta have fallen by more than a quarter in the past year.
Bureaucratic hurdles have long affected the India-focused group in its home market, where Mr Agarwal has suffered testy relations with India’s Congress party-led government and its ruling Gandhi family in particular.
Such political wrangling delayed the group’s purchase of Cairn Energy’s cash-rich Indian oil division in 2011.
Further troubles have resulted in a $6bn investment in a new aluminium refining facility in eastern India being held up by environmental disputes.

Some see the likely defeat of the Congress party in India’s May election – and its possible replacement by the opposition BJP party led by Narendra Modi – representing an opportunity for the group to get back on track.
However, difficulties remain, including a negotiation for the purchase of residual government stakes in Vedanta’s formerly state-owned zinc and aluminium divisions.
Mr Albanese will hope that any future government will find ways to restart India’s iron ore exports from the state of Goa, which have been banned for more than a year, crippling exports and severely damaging Sesa Goa, Vedanta’s ore division.
Shares in Vedanta were up 4 per cent to 892.5p at the London close.

My focus as CEO will be on operational excellence, efficient cost management and sustainability to drive long-term value for all our stakeholders
- Tom Albanese

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Tom Albanese lays out plans to fix Vedanta’s problems

May 15, 2014 3:47 pm
Tom Albanese lays out plans to fix Vedanta’s problems
By James Wilson, Mining Correspondent

Tom Albanese has laid out his plans for leading Vedanta Resources, insisting the diversified energy and mining group can rectify a series of operational and licence problems that have dogged its recent performance.
Mr Albanese – back in mining after losing his job as chief executive at Rio Tinto last year – said India would still be “the next big thing” for the resources sector. Vedanta, majority-owned by Anil Agarwal, has most of its operations in India – and a greater presence there than any peer – but has clashed frequently with regional governments over permits to operate.

India did “not have to follow the Chinese trajectory” to be “enormous for our business”, said Mr Albanese in an interview, drawing a parallel with China’s huge thirst for commodities over more than a decade.
Mr Agarwal appointed Mr Albanese as chief executive in March, hoping the US executive can help Vedanta to regain investor confidence after it slipped from the blue-chip FTSE 100 index last year. Mr Albanese, who has also said he wants to improve the company’s poor image and safety record, defended Vedanta’s performance in the 10 years since it listed in the UK, saying its return for shareholders had been better than for many mining peers.
Vedanta on Thursday reported a drop of more than 11 per cent in annual revenues, to $12.9bn, and a 35 per cent fall in pre-tax profit from $1.7bn to $1.1bn. However, the dividend was increased 5.4 per cent to 39 cents, payable out of earnings per share of 34.2 cents (134.8).
Analysts at Investec said Vedanta’s were “a weak set of results”, with lower commodity prices and underperformance at its zinc and copper assets. Mr Albanese’s priorities include improving the group’s Zambian copper operations, which he acknowledged were underperforming, partly because of a lack of suitable skills.
Steven Din, a former Rio colleague, was appointed this week to run the Zambian unit.
Other priorities include restarting iron ore production in the Indian province of Goa, where a mining ban was recently lifted, as well as securing bauxite supplies to feed an alumina refinery in Orissa. First Vedanta would try to ramp up output from its aluminium smelter in the province, Mr Albanese said.

Most of Vedanta’s capital spending is being funnelled into its oil and gas operations in Rajasthan, India. “The returns we see in oil and gas are far superior to the mining side,” Mr Albanese said.
Vedanta “wants more” than the 6 to 10 per cent annual growth it is getting from the Rajasthan fields, he said. Oil and gas, along with zinc, are the largest contributors to earnings.
Mr Agarwal – who this week dismissed the idea of taking the group private – said he hope Indian growth would accelerate under the country’s next government.
Vedanta shares fell 1.3 per cent to 972.5p.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/864d50f6-dc2d ... z3GyGDkmVT
Ce que l'on conçoit bien, s'énonce clairement, Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément. BOILEAU

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