By Sylvia Pfeifer
Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation has appointed veteran investment banker Mehmet Dalman as chairman in a move that sees the departure of Johannes Sittard from the London-listed Kazakh miner with immediate effect.
Mr Sittard had remained in his role after a long-awaited governance review in September that had been aimed at putting an end to long-running tensions between ENRC?s founding shareholders and several board members.
The review, however, left the management and board almost unchanged. Among the changes was the appointment of Mr Dalman, already a board member, to the role of senior independent director.
Mr Dalman, formerly head of Commerzbank Securities, left his executive role at Toscafund, the hedge fund, earlier this year to focus on his other commitments, including ENRC.
?There has been no coup – this was very much business as usual,? Mr Dalman said after his appointment.
?Mr Sittard decided for personal and business reasons to resign. He felt it was a good time to go; the share price has rebounded. It was all very natural.?
ENRC found itself in the headlines last year after an internal corporate governance dispute boiled over into a public row.
Two independent non-executive directors, Sir Richard Sykes and Ken Olisa, were voted off the board in June, leaving Mr Dalman and Paul Judge as the only remaining UK non-executive directors. While ENRC has been profitable since its 2007 flotation, it has traded at a sharp discount to peers partly because of corporate governance concerns.
? The Financial Times Limited 2012