City Press reports that Anglo American announced last week a $101m (R1.3bn) “best estimate” for settling its liability in the now 13-year-old legal battle to compensate mineworkers suffering from lung diseases.
Coincidentally, Gold Fields also announced its provision for a settlement as part of its financial results last week, amounting to $30.2m. This brings the value of the two provisions to R1.7bn. James Wellstead, spokesperson for Sibanye Gold, confirmed that the company would also have a provision for a settlement included in its financial results, set for release at the end of August. However, Wellstead warned that the figures being provided by the mines do not necessarily represent the value of a collective settlement. “I think that at this point, all the companies are coming up with their own independent estimates from their own auditors,” he said. That means that they are not necessarily using the same assumptions to calculate what is inevitably a hypothetical number. The major outstanding players that have yet to announce provisions are AngloGold Ashanti and Harmony Gold. These five companies will represent most of whatever settlement emerges.
- Read this report by Dewald Van Rensburg in full at City Press
- See too, Anglo American: R1.3bn for silicosis, at BusinessLive
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