ANDREW MACKENZIE

Mackenzie grew up in Scotland and studied chemistry at St Andrews, then completed a PhD at Bristol. He is one of very few mining executives with a doctorate in a hard science.

He spent 22 years at BP, working through petroleum geology and senior production roles globally.

BHP recruited him in 2008 to head their Non-Ferrous Materials division — copper, nickel, and uranium. He became CEO in May 2013, replacing Marius Kloppers who had nearly completed a disastrous $40 billion hostile takeover of Potash Corp.

Mackenzie's mandate from the board was clear: stop that.

His biggest structural move was the creation of South32 in May 2015 — demerging BHP's manganese, coal, silver, lead, and zinc assets into a standalone listed company on three exchanges. It was worth roughly $14 billion and represented a clean separation of assets BHP shareholders had long been discounting.

South32 subsequently performed well as an independent company.

He also navigated the Samarco dam disaster in November 2015, where a BHP-Vale joint venture mine dam in Brazil collapsed, killing 19 people and triggering the country's worst environmental disaster. He managed the crisis with more transparency than most mining executives would have, but BHP faced years of legal proceedings and multi-billion dollar remediation costs.

He stepped down in January 2020, handing over to Mike Henry, and moved into clean energy advisory and board roles.

BP (22 years, senior upstream roles) — he came up through petroleum geology and production in one of the world's largest oil companies. BHP (CEO, 2013-2019) — the world's largest diversified mining company, with iron ore out of Australia, copper from Chile, coal from Queensland, and offshore petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico.

After BHP: board roles at BioMarine Pharmaceuticals and various clean energy and sustainability-focused organisations, reflecting a genuine post-mining pivot.

He believed in portfolio discipline above deal-making. Value over volume was his operating principle.

He preferred organic productivity improvements over acquisitions, and was resistant to big deals precisely because the historical record of mining mega-mergers is terrible — the acquirer almost always overpays. He was early to argue that climate change would reshape commodity demand, making him structurally bullish on copper and nickel and cautious on thermal coal well before that view became mainstream in the industry.

The creation of South32 in May 2015. He demerged $14 billion worth of non-core BHP assets — manganese, coal, silver, lead, zinc — into a standalone listed company.

It was the biggest mining demerger in history at the time. South32 performed well as an independent company.

Crucially, it simplified BHP's portfolio at a time when markets were punishing diversification. Most CEOs avoid this kind of complexity reduction because it shrinks the empire they run.

Mackenzie did it because he believed it was the right thing for shareholders, and he was correct.

The Samarco dam disaster in November 2015 happened on his watch. The Fundao tailings dam at the Samarco joint venture with Vale burst, releasing 60 million cubic metres of iron ore waste into the Doce River.

Nineteen people died. The environmental damage to the river system was described as Brazil's worst-ever environmental disaster.

BHP faced years of legal proceedings and remediation costs running into billions. The question of whether mining companies can safely manage tailings storage at the scale the industry operates is one he could not definitively answer by the time he left.

Return on capital first, always. If the investment does not clear a meaningful hurdle, do not make it.

He was transparent about the fact that the historical record of mining mega-deals was bad and he did not intend to add to it. Steady dividends and capital returns beat growth for its own sake.

The discipline was not about being timid — it was about recognising that scale without returns is not an achievement.

He is married with a family. He is open about his Christian faith and has said it shapes how he thinks about stewardship and intergenerational responsibility.

He has mentioned in interviews that his beliefs inform his views on environmental obligations and the long-term consequences of corporate decisions. This is somewhat unusual for a FTSE 100 CEO to say publicly, which perhaps explains why he talked about climate risk more directly than his peers.

BSc in Geology, University of St Andrews. PhD in Chemistry, University of Bristol.

He has said the scientific training taught him to look for evidence, distrust his own assumptions, and think rigorously about cause and effect. That background is visible in how he communicated about risk and strategy throughout his leadership career.

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