Glencore Plc ended its status as the only FTSE-100 company without a woman on its board by appointing Canadian mining executive Patrice Merrin an independent non- executive director .
Merrin, 65, is a former of chief operating officer at nickel and energy producer Sherritt International Corp. and chief executive officer of Luscar Ltd., the largest thermal coal producer in Canada. . She’s a non-executive director of New York-listed Stillwater Mining Co., the world’s largest platinum and palladium producer outside of South Africa and Russia.
Glencore, run by billionaire CEO Ivan Glasenberg, has been under pressure from activists groups and politicians including U.K. Business Secretary Vince Cable to appoint a female director for more than a year. Glencore Chairman and former BP Plc CEO Tony Hayward said in May the company would make the appointment by the end of the year, describing it as an “important priority” for the miner and commodity trader.
“Ivan wants someone that isn’t seen as just tokenism,” Paul Gait, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd. in London, said on 27 June. “His objective, as I understood it has always been, was that if they are going to appoint someone they want someone with experience who is actually going to contribute to the debate. Just looking at the CV it appears to be one that will tick the boxes.”
Merrin, a former director of the Alberta Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation, was a member of the Canadian Advisory Panel on Sustainable Energy Science and Technology, and served on Canada’s Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.
