Harmony Gold and AngloGold Ashanti add independent directors in three weeks

Alwyn Pretorius and James Boardman joined the Harmony Gold Mining board as independent non-executive directors on 15 October, the company said on 16 October, and AngloGold Ashanti announced on 25 September that Paul Graves would join its board on 1 October.

The two companies, both gold producers listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, have each added independent non-executive directors.

Harmony: two appointments and a new lead independent director

Harmony's announcement, made under paragraph 6.71 of the JSE Listings Requirements, said the board was satisfied that both men meet the applicable independence requirements and that fit and proper assessments had been performed. The company also confirmed that there were no positive statements to report on the integrity information in their directors' declarations, the filing says.

Pretorius is a former mining executive and qualified engineer who held senior roles at Newmont Corporation, including regional senior vice president for Africa and South America and managing director of Papua New Guinea. He also held executive roles at Harmony between 2006 and 2015, including chief operating officer, the announcement says. That executive service ended in 2015, 11 years before the board appointment, on the dates the company gave. Boardman is a Chartered Financial Analyst whose career includes the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Bain & Company and private capital investment firms. Chairman Patrice Motsepe said their combined experience "will further strengthen the Board's oversight capabilities".

Earlier, on 17 August, Harmony said that Faan Lombard had been appointed chairman of its nomination committee and lead independent director from 14 August, succeeding Mavuso Msimang, who remains a member of the committee. The announcement noted that Lombard has been a member of the audit and risk committee since an announcement made on 17 January 2025.

AngloGold Ashanti: a former lithium chief executive

Graves will serve on the audit and risk committee and on the social, ethics and sustainability committee, the company said. It described him as most recently chief executive of Rio Tinto Lithium after Rio Tinto's acquisition of Arcadium Lithium, where he was president and chief executive. He previously led Livent Corporation as president and chief executive, was chief financial officer of FMC Corporation from 2012 to 2018 and spent 12 years in investment banking at Goldman Sachs. He sits on the board of Charles River Laboratories International, where he chairs the strategic planning and capital allocation committee and is a member of the audit committee, the release says.

Chair Jochen Tilk said in the release that Graves "brings to the Board a rare combination of international executive leadership, deep financial discipline and decades of experience across commodities and natural resources".

The board Graves joins was voted on at the company's annual meeting in May. The results announcement shows 11 directors on the ballot, with Marcus Randolph elected and ten others re-elected. Support ranged from 77.73 per cent for Albert Garner, with 22.27 per cent against, to 99.99 per cent for Alberto Calderon. The 91,445,187 votes against Garner were the most cast against any director, and the next highest share against was 7.46 per cent for Doran, who received 92.54 per cent support. The directors' remuneration report passed with 93.50 per cent, and the authority for political donations of up to £100,000 passed with 75.31 per cent. The company said 505,577,721 ordinary shares were in issue on the 13 March record date, and that withheld votes and abstentions are not counted in the percentages.

What the filings leave open

Neither announcement says whether the new directors fill vacancies or enlarge the boards, or how many independent directors each board has after the change. Harmony said in its filing that the appointments took effect on 15 October, the day before it published them. AngloGold Ashanti published its notice six days before Graves's start date, the release says.