Anglo CEO pursues value as works on De Beers spin-off

By Felix Njini and Clara Denina

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Anglo American is working to maximise its value should any new M&A suitor come along and anticipates significant progress this year on a keenly-awaited spin-off of its De Beers diamond business, CEO Duncan Wanblad said on Monday.

The London-listed miner in May rebuffed a $49 billion hostile bid from the world's biggest miner BHP, which was focused on Anglo's copper assets.

Since then Anglo, whose stock was the best-performing of the major miners in 2024, has streamlined the company by selling off coal assets and agreeing to separate out its platinum business.

It has still to find buyers for its nickel operations in Brazil and partners for a UK fertiliser project that needs massive amounts of capital to bring it into commercial production.

But spinning off De Beers could be a major boost for valuation, given weak demand for diamonds.

Anglo said in May it would take between 18 months and two years to spin off the unit, a timeline analysts have said is too ambitious.

Wanblad, however, said plans to divest De Beers "would be substantively complete" by the end of 2025.

"It's going to be fully set up as a standalone business to make sure that it's not going to be impacting as a drag in any way, shape or form on the business," he said on the sidelines of the Indaba mining conference in Cape Town.

Botswana, which owns a 15% stake in De Beers has offered to raise its stake.

"They certainly indicated a desire to increase their stake and they have also said they would do so on commercial terms," Wanblad said, but declined to say how a big a stake Botswana wanted.

Without De Beers, Anglo could find itself even more hotly pursued for its rich, long-life copper assets in Latin America as copper is critical for the transition to greener energy and needed by data centres required by artificial intelligence.

A takeover can be the fastest way to generate returns for the targeted company and its shareholders, who have the final say in any deal.

"Consolidating the industry, per se, whilst it looks fantastic from a corporate financing point of view, isn't a good thing for the population of the world because less gets done," Wanblad said.

"But my job is to drive the best value for shareholders from this company and that's what I'm doing," he said further. "So if this company is fully valued and somebody makes a high premium offer for it, fantastic."

(Reporting by Felix Njini, Clara Denina; Editing by Veronica Brown and Barbara Lewis)