Bye to 'distasteful' CEO who 'stalked' PPC board

PPC has finally shut the door on the unseemly falling out between its former CEO Ketso Gordhan and financial director Tryphosa Ramano. Fights over executive perks, parking bays and bigger offices are now hopefully behind the company, which has a new board as of this week. Chairman Bheki Sibiya reflects on the debacle.

The PPC board has been reconstituted, and Tryphosa Ramano remains the financial director. How do you ensure that the issues that led to the falling out with Ketso Gordhan will not be repeated?

Darryll Castle, our CEO, is not Ketso, so it's unlikely that he will behave like him.

Are you saying the strife between Ramano and Gordhan came from Gordhan?

The issues were Ketso's issues, not Tryphosa's issues. Ketso failed to manage his relationship with Tryphosa, the board and the shareholders.

Has the board been appropriately reconstituted?

The shareholders reconstituted the board - all we did was facilitate the process. The shareholders nominated the candidates - [they] voted on who should be on the board and so the board is as it is, thanks to the shareholders' decisions.

We respect the decision of the shareholders, and in my view the shareholders made very good decisions.

But they have not been happy with the performance of PPC at board level before.

Well, may I say that just marginally higher than 10% of the shareholders were not happy. Close to 90% of the shareholders were not unhappy, and at no stage was any unhappiness expressed.

We, however - in terms of the memorandum of incorporation - were required to engage with the shareholders, and we produced the outcome that we produced.

But we also opened up the outcome so that the other 90% of shareholders could tender nominations.

Some did and others did not, but all of them had a right - and they exercised their right to vote at the AGM. When I look at the board as it stands, it is fit for purpose.

Would you admit that things were handled badly last year - it was quite distasteful, for example, to see newspaper ads being taken out by PPC?

I agree that the former CEO was very distasteful in the way he personalised the issues [with] Tryphosa and inappropriately criticised the board.

However, he continued to stalk the board, and the board has the responsibility of protecting and promoting the interests of the company.

After many weeks, the board felt silence was not the appropriate thing, even during the closed period in which we were, and therefore I will not accept that there was any "distastefulness" on the part of the board.

There were suggestions during the scuffle with Gordhan that you were angling for an executive position. Was that just mischievous chatter?

Absolutely mischievous. I am employed by the Chamber of Mines as a CEO. I love that job. It's a job from which I will retire. [The chatter] was devoid of truth, but the former CEO was grappling at straws again.

Yet you agreed to preside over the board as chair through the transition phase, after which you would hand over to nonexecutive director Zibusiso Kganyago. Could this phase take longer than you had planned and can you give it your full attention?

The board re-elected me and appealed to me to retire at the next AGM in January 2016. I accepted that. I am planning to retire from the chamber during the course of this year. The chairman's role is nonexecutive. I can assure you that I have been available practically every time that I am needed to play the role.

So, I am not worried at all that there is any time problem. I am clear about the invisible line between executive and nonexecutive. I did not even want to take the executive chairman role. It was the board who pleaded with me robustly.

Well, at least you know you're popular ...

(He laughs.)

Could Gordhan stage a comeback? A fter his resignation there was an agreement that would allow him to consult to PPC.

Ketso wrote us an e-mail and said he had taken a unilateral decision not to tender his services. We accepted that, so we are going to want a refund on the prepayment [of R5-million] we gave him.

I guess a braai is out of the question?

Well, let me share this with you - our former CEO is a wonderful person. Truly. But in this regard he had a blind spot [Tryphosa]. We tried as a board to shine a light on the blind spot, but he didn't see it.

We engaged Michael Katz, who is a world-class lawyer and independent facilitator - but the more we shone the light, the more it gave [Gordhan] the glare, and the blind spot continued. It is unfortunate, but it is what it is.

He needs to move on and find other assignments.

This is an edited version of Talevi's interview with Sibiya. Talevi is a BDTV presenter