Press Release Archive - 2009

Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, Chairman, Anglo American plc:

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Anglo American Annual General Meeting. Notice of the meeting was dispatched to shareholders on 11 March and there is a quorum present. I therefore declare the meeting to be duly constituted.  May I present an apology from David Challen who is unable to join us today through illness. 

We meet to provide you with reports on the management and performance of your company during 2008 – a year of unprecedented economic dislocation and instability.  Overall, during the year, the company produced a very strong financial performance with operating profit from core operations climbing 10% to $9.8 billion.  Underlying earnings stood at $5.2 billion and earnings per share were down by only four cents to $4.36.

These figures mask, however, the extraordinary pattern of events which unfolded during the year so that, after a strong performance in the first seven months, most commodity prices fell precipitously.  From their high points in the first half of the year, the price of platinum had fallen by 59% by the end of the year; copper by 65% and nickel by 69% - as the banking system came close to collapse, confidence and credit drained from the system and global financial markets went into free fall. 

We have continued to see that, although some emerging market economies are doing less badly than others, the spread of globalisation over the last two decades, means that the world is far more inter-connected than ever before. Thus, the recession is being felt even in those countries that have pursued orthodox macro-economic policies and whose regulatory systems have not failed.  Sadly, from the point of view of the industry, the hypothesis that there would be a decoupling as between the new and old world economies’ has proven to be largely wrong.

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