February 6, 2009, 9.04 pm (Singapore time)
Temasek turns to US ex-mining chief
SINGAPORE - Chip Goodyear, the former chief of BHP Billiton and now CEO-designate at Singapore's best known wealth fund, hails from the halls of Ivy League universities and Wall Street, but is best known for his reign at the Australian mining giant.
Mr Goodyear, who will take the helm at state investment agency Temasek Holdings in October, replacing Ho Ching, descends from a US lumber baron and was schooled at Yale and Wharton School of Finance.
He joined then debt-ridden BHP in 1999 as chief financial officer, and was instrumental in growing the company into the world's top miner, via a merger with South Africa's Billiton, with a market value bigger than the GDP of some countries it operated in.
Accolades flowed from Australian media when Mr Goodyear eventually packed his bags and retired in September 2007.
Mr Goodyear was one-half of an American duo, with Duke Energy's Paul Anderson, imported to staunch the bleeding at 'The Big Australian' and rebuild after a series of investment blunders.
After they joined, BHP closed mines, cut 2,000 jobs and swallowed a A$2.3 billion loss (worth US$1.5 billion at the time) before the Billiton merger. Mr Anderson left, but Mr Goodyear stayed on and was later named CEO.
Though schooled in the 1980s through Wall Street brokerage Kidder Peabody, Charles Waterhouse Goodyear managed to endear himself as much to BHP's legion of mom and pop investors then as he did to the big institutions that increasingly took stakes in BHP over his tenure.
He is reputed for calling just about everyone by their first name and in turn was always Chip, never Charles, or Mr Goodyear.
Mr Goodyear has been described as an impeccably groomed American investment banker who is urbane and rarely flustered.
He is married with two children. -- REUTERS
http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/latest/story/0,4574,317807,00.html?
Temasek turns to US ex-mining chief
SINGAPORE - Chip Goodyear, the former chief of BHP Billiton and now CEO-designate at Singapore's best known wealth fund, hails from the halls of Ivy League universities and Wall Street, but is best known for his reign at the Australian mining giant.
Mr Goodyear, who will take the helm at state investment agency Temasek Holdings in October, replacing Ho Ching, descends from a US lumber baron and was schooled at Yale and Wharton School of Finance.
He joined then debt-ridden BHP in 1999 as chief financial officer, and was instrumental in growing the company into the world's top miner, via a merger with South Africa's Billiton, with a market value bigger than the GDP of some countries it operated in.
Accolades flowed from Australian media when Mr Goodyear eventually packed his bags and retired in September 2007.
Mr Goodyear was one-half of an American duo, with Duke Energy's Paul Anderson, imported to staunch the bleeding at 'The Big Australian' and rebuild after a series of investment blunders.
After they joined, BHP closed mines, cut 2,000 jobs and swallowed a A$2.3 billion loss (worth US$1.5 billion at the time) before the Billiton merger. Mr Anderson left, but Mr Goodyear stayed on and was later named CEO.
Though schooled in the 1980s through Wall Street brokerage Kidder Peabody, Charles Waterhouse Goodyear managed to endear himself as much to BHP's legion of mom and pop investors then as he did to the big institutions that increasingly took stakes in BHP over his tenure.
He is reputed for calling just about everyone by their first name and in turn was always Chip, never Charles, or Mr Goodyear.
Mr Goodyear has been described as an impeccably groomed American investment banker who is urbane and rarely flustered.
He is married with two children. -- REUTERS
http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/latest/story/0,4574,317807,00.html?
