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AngloGold Ashanti (NYSE:AU) (JSE:ANG), the world’s No. 3 gold producer, will cut close to 2,000 management jobs, or about 40% of its management positions, to reduce costs, its new CEO Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan said on Wednesday.
The South African miner, which posted a $2.2bn quarterly loss after a $2.4bn post-tax charge on its assets in response to the historic fall in gold prices, said job cuts are part of a larger plan aimed at saving the company as much as $482 million next year.
The company will cut capital expenditure at 21 of its operations in 10 countries, as well as slowing output at higher-cost mines as it adjusts to a gold price that has dropped almost 25% this year.
AngloGold will also stop exploration activities in more than a dozen countries.
“We have adopted a decisive, two-pronged response to this weaker gold price environment, focused on revenue enhancement and improving efficiencies by addressing costs at a number of levels,” Venkat said in a statement.
He also announced the company won’t pay a quarterly dividend and will return to paying twice a year.
See full results here.
Image: The executioner’s axe, Tower of London, by John Morris via Fickr.
3 Comments
ghartwell
Sad that we see people’s jobs lost without a whine or whimper. Sad because it means we accept corporations can and should operate without any sense of obligation to employee. In other words employees are hardly human or significant when compared to $.
Michael Hall
I agree with ghartwell. To make a broad statement/decision by the new CEO is mind boggling to say the least. If I read the report, its talks about cutting 2000 management fobs????????????????????. I would like see how he came about making that decision.
Question: Are these managers in top/senior positions???. Are they mid tier positions ????. Are they at supervisor level????
The problem with todays CEO’S is that they cannot see the “wood for the trees”
For example The CEO of Goldfields some months back, at some presentation made a statement which reads something like this. Quote “the costs and the gold price are relative to each other” Unquote. Hullo, what planet does come from, now we have another CEO from another Planet making these ridiculous statements.
He obviously has no long term vision, I assume he is BONUS/SHARE driven with his appointment and when the “CRAP HITS THE FAN” when the gold price rallies and moves to the $2000 mark. What happens now?. Where is he going to 2000 managers to extract gold at that price. He will jump ship with massive retrenment package which is also written into his appointment.
The same goes for some new CEO for a mining that make4s a statement. Quote “Mining in the future is going to be AUTOMATED this in order to cut costs/improve safety/increase production “Unquote I wonder what planet he comes from??.
AmericanBeauty
its called economics, they fire people when they can’t afford to pay them any longer, the corporations don’t have any obligation to the employee, they have an obligation to the shareholders. what world do you live in Ghartwell?