KEY POINTS:
There is something reassuring about the fact that the new head of BHP Billiton, the biggest mining company in the world, didn't know what he wanted to do until he was 30.
"I had been in further education for 10 years, which tells you that there was no master plan," says Marius Kloppers.
Now 45, he takes over from Chip Goodyear, who had headed the company for five years, a period that coincided with the biggest commodities boom in history.
During the 90s, Kloppers was immersed in academia, but like many successful captains of industry, he went to all the right colleges: MIT in the US, where his PhD was secured by a thesis on the electrochemistry of iron chemical alloys. Later, he collected an MBA from Insead, the elite business school in France, before landing a job at McKinsey, the influential management consultancy.
The way he tells it, a chance application to South African mining group Gencor in 1992 brought him into an industry renowned for swashbuckling executives and larger-than-life characters.
Kloppers, born in Cape Town, comes over as neither. He has the air of a confident but quietly determined manager. Analysts say that he lacks the smooth charm of Goodyear, but knows his stuff and doesn't try and skirt round difficult questions.
As he pours a coffee at the company's swish offices near Victoria in London, he explains that the past two months have been hectic.
"I've been around the world meeting our customers and stakeholders in five continents, and that means a lot of time on aeroplanes and staying in hotels." He must be tired?
"No, you get used to it. You have to."
BHP Billiton's biggest client is Posco, a South Korean company valued at US$50 billion ($65.5 billion) on the Seoul stock exchange. But the job has taken Kloppers to India, China, Brazil, the US and Russia.
No one gets to be boss of a big mining company by being shy and retiring: Kloppers is no exception. Despite the academic bent, he spent two years as a conscript in the South African army at a time when Pretoria's troops were mounting undercover raids into neighbouring Angola, which was fighting a civil war against Marxist insurgents.
Growing up in South Africa as apartheid was breaking down was "neither easy nor comfortable", he remembers. Though he now lives in Melbourne, with his wife and childhood sweetheart Carin, he still keeps a house on the coast, not far from Cape Town and manages to escape there once or twice a year.
But being head of an Australian company means that Kloppers has to be careful. When it comes to rugby, for instance, a passion since childhood, he supports the Aussies, except when they play the Springboks. "Then it gets tricky."
BHP Billiton's headquarters are in Australia, reflecting BHP's past as the biggest industrial group Downunder. In 2001, the Australian company BHP merged with Billiton to form a company worth US$30 billion, which today is worth US$200 billion, thanks to booming commodity prices, organic expansion and an aggressive acquisition programme.
When Gencor reinvented itself as Billiton in 1996, Kloppers had already been spotted as a man with talent. He rose from being a humble production manager to head of human resources, head of marketing, chief operating officer for aluminium and finally president of non-ferrous metals, prior to being appointed chief executive-designate in June.
He is in line for a basic salary of US$1.85 million, but bonuses and other payments could take the figure to more than US$5 million, excluding potential windfalls from a long-term incentive plan.
So, does the new man come with a new strategy?
"Some may be disappointed, but the answer is no. We have a business that is growing by leaps and bounds. So it's more of the same. Don't forget we have been delivering volume growth of nearly 10 per cent a year since 2002.
"Look at our pipeline: we have US$20 billion-worth of projects that we are currently working on and another US$50 billion for the longer term. We made record annual profits of nearly US$17 billion."
Last week, there was speculation that BHP Billiton had stumbled on the biggest gold deposit in the world at its Olympic Dam in Australia. The news wasn't quite that good, but reserves of uranium, copper and gold at the mines had risen to 7.7 billion tonnes, 75 per cent more than estimated.
But is the euphoria surrounding the mining industry entirely justified, especially in the wake of the global liquidity crisis, a possible US recession and an expected global economic slowdown?
"I am not saying the sector is immune to business cycles. But a seminal event is happening in the world: two billion people are entering the industrial age. It's like rebuilding Europe after the Second World War, but on an even bigger scale. And remember that the driver for China is not only exports, but Chinese domestic demand; in India, it's the same. So a slowdown in the US would not necessarily impact as heavily on the Asian economies as some suggest."
In the same vein, Kloppers, who formally took over from Goodyear this week, says the credit crunch has had "zero impact" on China and India.
"No one seems to be worried about the sub-prime crisis in the US."
Kloppers says the group's strength derives from being a diversified miner with interests in coal, oil, uranium, iron ore, copper and aluminium. He is excited about the prospects for uranium, used to provide nuclear energy, which governments are turning to in an attempt to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.
But not everyone is as bullish about the future. Metals analysts at NAB Capital Markets reckon the outlook for copper, the bellwether for world demand and growth, will come under pressure over the next 12 months.
Kloppers accepts that there will always be a degree of volatility when it comes to metals prices but the key is that supply is still relatively tight and demand is strong. He is confident, too, that rising costs can be offset by price rises.
"We have been able to translate around 80 per cent of price increases into pre-tax profit, which isn't bad going. But when prices are strong, contractors know they can charge more - that's inevitable."
If forecasters at NAB Capital Markets are right and the sector faces solid but less effervescent growth, Kloppers could hit the acquisitions trail.
However, he says BHP Billiton doesn't need to expand by acquiring competitors, but he doesn't rule it out either.
According to Kloppers, mining company share prices are not particularly overpriced, and some are less expensive than the market as a whole.
"We view that with some interest. But that's not the same as saying we are looking at anything in particular."
If that doesn't keep the City of London guessing, nothing will.
Observer
