#David McKay
Brian Gilbertson, chair of Billiton, collects clocks. Isn’t that odd as well as intriguing?
Odd because Gilbertson is renowned in mining circles for the more outward shows of his material success: the ostentatious commuting to and from his Johannesburg office by helicopter, the Porsche apparently permanently on display in an underground bay at Billiton, and for his commitment, at 58 years of age, to a cycling regimen reportedly beyond the limits of a much younger man.
Above all this, Gilbertson is on the verge of corporate nirvana: he is 12 months away from sitting atop the world’s largest diversified mining company, BHP Billiton. That’s the firm he’ll head up assuming this week’s proposal to merge United Kingdom-listed Billiton and Sydney-listed BHP passes muster with the usual regulatory and shareholder obstacles. It’s a deal worth $28-billion and creates a company with an attributable profit of $2-billion. Gilbertson himself termed the prospect the greatest mining job on Earth.
And then there are those clocks. Aficionados know it as horology; the study of measuring time. Imagine all those timepieces: carriage clocks, grandfather clocks and a Rolex, no doubt. All keeping time in his plush Johannesburg and London homes.
But then having a sense of timing is perhaps this businessman’s greatest quality and the reason why a son of the predominantly rural Free State was able to scale the heights of the mining world. The curriculum vitae has a surgical feel: well-paced, almost logical. Degree, further degree, business diploma (Harvard), the different managerial levels and then those quantum leaps that would scare most of us.
His judgement isn’t peerless, however. In the masterstroke cutting free Gencor some of which became Billiton plc from gold assets he also released lucrative platinum mines, which currently sit in the Gencor shell. Perhaps he’ll retrieve them.
There’s also that Swiss watchmakers attention to detail: you can imagine Gilbertson staring down the minutiae of a mining deal, counting the beats of its structure: will it work, won’t it? How will this piece fit into that one. Wheels within wheels.
He has a scientist’s training: at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and he was principal investigator for Nasa on the ERTS-1 project.
Attention to detail also shares a common root with stories of his watchfulness over the corp-orate wallet. Gilbertson is known to be tight with the purse strings. He’s not a director of the South African Reserve Bank for nothing. Close rival Anglo American has been prepared to splash out in a more land-grab approach to mining consolidation. But Billiton’s steadfast refusal to spend its $1,5-billion initial public offering cash pile after arriving in London in 1997 was almost legendary. You can say that reputation has been ended. If BHP Billiton comes about, it will have up to $8-billion in mining projects to complete by 2005.
Then there’s the story of how Billiton employees coined the phrase: “The ego has landed.” This was when Gilbertson’s helicopter descended on its helipad atop the Billiton head offices in Johannesburg. But perhaps Gilbert- son’s best quality of all is that he hasn’t lost the common touch. He grins not smiles. The effect is boyish charm underpinned by a clever sense of humour.
But what it really all comes down to is brains and a taste for trojan-like working hours. Analysts say Gilbertson will regu- larly work through the night, keeping impossible hours. They talk about his brutal decision-making ability. A former assistant talks of an iron stare when crossed.
But it was the smiling, slightly jokey Gilbertson who sat in attendance earlier this week. “There are many times when we went from euphoria to despair,” said Paul Anderson, BHP’s managing director and CEO, and the man who worked with Gilbertson in constructing the deal. “It’s one of the most exciting moments I’ve been involved in.”
He then asked if Brian agreed. From the other side of the satellite image, through which the Billiton chief was communicating from Melbourne, Gilbertson could be seen, grinning and nodding, in giant, exaggerated motions.