Roy Cokayne
PPC had received a total of 17 nominations for non-executive director’s positions on the reconstituted and expanded board of the listed cement and lime producer by the December 8 closing date for nominations, Kevin Odendaal, PPC’s international business development executive, confirmed on Friday.
“The company does not want to pre-empt the circular that will be sent to shareholders most probably this week. The names that will be put forward by the nominations committee will be contained in the notice of the AGM (annual general meeting),” he said.
Odendaal said the list of 17 nominees would be reduced to a short list of 12, from which shareholders would elect six candidates at the AGM to be held on January 26.
The remaining six directors would not be voted on at the upcoming AGM, he added.
“They will automatically be on the new board to ensure continuity but up for re-election as per the normal process and timelines in future,” he said.
PPC on Friday announced that former AngloGold Ashanti chief executive Bobby Godsell had withdrawn his consent to be nominated as a non-executive director of PPC’s board.
Tumi Dlamini, the executive director of Master Builders South Africa, withdrew her consent to be nominated on December 5.
This means only Claudia Manning, Gesina Coetzer, Peter Nelson and Keshan Pillay remain of the six nominations made by Foord Asset Management, Visio Capital Management and Nedbank Private Wealth. PPC’s shares on the JSE ended up 49c at R25.02.
The nominations were made as part of an agreement reached with PPC on the reconstitution and expansion of PPC’s board and the withdrawal of their request for a special meeting to vote on a proposal to remove the current board.
The reconstituted PPC board will comprise 12 non-executive directors, with four current board members stepping down and being replaced by six new directors.
None of the 12 non-executive directors of the reconstituted board would include any current or former permanent executive directors of PPC who had served the group within the 10-year period immediately prior to the AGM.
This meant that former PPC chief executive Ketso Gordhan, who had initially been nominated by the disgruntled shareholders, was ineligible to be nominated. Gordhan resigned at the end of September when PPC’s board prevented him from dismissing the company’s chief financial officer Tryphosa Ramano, but shortly thereafter attempted to get the board to allow him to retract his resignation and reinstate him, which was refused.
PPC said on December 3 it was deemed in the best interest of the company to select a new chief executive at the earliest possible date and the current board would continue the selection process.
Bloomberg reported on Friday that PPC was considering Darryll Castle as one of three candidates to become chief executive, according to a person familiar with the matter. Castle, a former chief executive of commodity trader Trafigura Beheer’s mining division, was appointed a non-executive director in October.