AngloGold Ashanti will remain on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange with a secondary listing, after completing the shift of its primary listing to the New York Stock Exchange.
Reuters reports that the company’s ‘reorganisation’ also entailed relocating its headquarters to London from Johannesburg. AngloGold will keep an office in South Africa.
A month ago, more than 98% of AngloGold shareholders approved the switch, exceeding the required majority of at least 75% at a virtual meeting, the company said in a statement.
AngloGold, the forerunner of which was founded by industrialist Ernest Oppenheimer a century ago, completed the sale of its South African mines in 2020, with the company shifting its attention to more lucrative mines in Ghana, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as Australia and the Americas.
Business Day reported: ‘The company’s SA exit was a wise decision as it reduced its exposure to a challenging operating environment, where it faced rising costs, labour unrest, power outages and regulatory uncertainty. In 2020 AngloGold offloaded Mponeng Mine, with surface assets and the mothballed TauTona and Savuka mines, to its rival Harmony Gold for $300m, removing a profitable but risky asset from its portfolio.’
Writing in Daily Maverick, veteran business commentator Tim Cohen said of the move: ‘Personally, I think it’s easy to explain away the decline of the SA gold industry as a consequence of geology. Of course, that’s part of it, but there are other aspects too. There are still minerals to be found in SA and mines to be mined.’
Cohen reflected that ‘(you) don’t get promoted in the government for making mines happen; you get promoted for making miners bend their knees. And then there is Eskom, and the unions, and the endless Mining Charter debate. And. And. And.
‘And so the company that was listed on the JSE in August 1944 – that made so much happen in the second half of the 20th century – has set its sights elsewhere. It’s sad.’
[Image: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid https://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/14313066998]