“Notable faces influenced by Anglo American”

https://southafrica.angloamerican.com/about-us/history/our-centenary-hub/stories/notable-faces-influenced-by-anglo-american?catvalue=*
25 Sep, 2017

The company’s extensive bursary programme in the 1980s and 1990s produced the corporate elite we see in SA today, writes Dewald van Rensburg.

Anglo American people are everywhere. “Every other mining house globally, by default, has an executive who was groomed and trained by Anglo American,” says Mike Teke, former president of the Chamber of Mines. “It is a spectacular influence; it is amazing. Who does not come from Anglo American?”

Until the 1990s, the group, in a very real way, ran the region’s economy. After the company’s wholesale restructuring into a more focused mining company, those who grew up inside it can still be found throughout the corporate world in South Africa and beyond.

It is hard to overstate the role played by the company’s extensive bursary programme in the 1980s and 1990s in shaping South Africa’s corporate elite. Bursars run many Anglo American units, but also occupy a variety of positions outside the group.

Anglo American represented a major vein in South Africa’s business culture. Teke says: “The culture within Anglo American, from the Oppenheimers, was this culture of being a corporate, corporatised business. Everything is formal, everything is systematic. Everything has policies and procedures.”

*This content was extracted from the Anglo American Centenary City Press supplement. Click here to download the full supplement. https://southafrica.angloamerican.com/~/media/Files/A/Anglo-American-Group/South-Africa/about-us/centenary-hub-docs/centenary-hub-city-press.pdf