Establishing herself as an executive in a male-dominated industry, Carroll reor-ganized the company and won respect for improving safety and record profits, ana-lysts and investors have criticized how she handled the Minas Rio iron ore mine in Brazil. After acquiring it for $6.6 bil-lion, and investing an additional $3.25 billion, the project is now reportedly worth an estimated $4.3 billion. Two more projects, a copper mine in Chile and a nickel mine in Brazil, are also run-ning over budget.

“It has been a great honor to lead Anglo American,” Carroll said. “I am extremely proud of everything we have achieved during my period as chief exec-utive and I will always retain enormous admiration and affection for this great company and its outstanding people. It is a very difficult decision to leave, but next year I will be entering my seventh year as chief executive and I feel that the time will be right to hand over to a successor who can build further on the strong foun-dations we have created.”

Paying tribute to Carroll, Anglo American Chairman Sir John Parker said: “Cynthia’s leadership has had a transformational impact on Anglo American. She developed a clear strate-gy, based on a highly attractive range of core commodities, and created a strong and unified culture and a streamlined organization with a focus on operational performance. Her legacy will include, among many other things, a step change improvement in safety, sustainability and the quality of our dialogue with gov-ernments, communities and other stake-holders. Her values represent the very best of Anglo American.”

In addition to her executive role, Carroll was also the chairman of Anglo American Platinum and of De Beers and she will relinquish those roles when she steps down as chief executive of Anglo American.

Readers can watch a video inter-view at: http://merchantcantos.net/anglo-american/2012/announcement.