Legal team size: Three

Major legal advisers/ external counsel: Reindorf Chambers, Kimathi & Partners and ENS Africa

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

In the event of a crisis, Gold Fields’ Crisis Management Plan (CMP) must be activated. This plan is updated annually to ensure its relevance and effectiveness. The CMP is integrated with the EMQ Net system, which includes an alert mechanism that flags urgent issues in red, necessitating immediate action. Activating the CMP brings together a designated team of experts, with the legal department playing a pivotal role. This interdisciplinary approach ensures that the crisis is managed comprehensively. Additionally, a specialized task team should be constituted to address any unique challenges arising from the situation and to cover areas not already encompassed by the CMP. Throughout the crisis, the team must apply the knowledge gained from crisis management training, adopting a 360-degree perspective to ensure the issue is effectively contained and resolved.

Gold Fields’ legal strategy is deeply intertwined with the company’s overall business strategy. The legal team plays a crucial role in crafting business strategies, ensuring that they are developed in a fully integrated manner. Legal and governance functions are fundamental components of the company’s broader governance and risk management structures, reinforcing their alignment with business objectives. The company’s performance management system also reflects this integration, incorporating the general business strategy across key functions, including legal, and cascading it throughout the organization.

With expertise spanning law, business, finance, and tax, I ensure that legal strategies are developed using established business tools such as SWOT analysis, SMART goals, and Porter’s Five Forces—mirroring the approach used in broader business planning. This seamless integration enables the legal function to contribute strategically to business growth. Finally, a continuous improvement approach should be employed, leveraging adaptive tools to keep the company nimble, lean, and responsive to changes within this dynamic industry.

In your opinion, what are the main trends affecting your work now?

Compliance and disclosure requirements associated with Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) standards, regulations and Gold Fields’ commitments in that regard. Enhanced compliance requirements associated with relatively heightened focus on areas such as cybersecurity, privacy & data protection, anti-money laundering (AML), ethics, anti-bribery and corruption. Cost and efficiency measures to address economic challenges in a relatively high inflation economic environment, especially because Gold Fields is a price-taker for the gold it produces. Finally, the integration of sustainability into the Gold Fields’ risk management systems.

What strategic priorities are guiding your legal team into 2025?

Among a number of strategic priorities, I would mention: growth and opportunities including mergers and acquisitions opportunity (one of Gold Fields’ pending M&A deals is the proposed joint venture between Gold Fields’ Tarkwa Mine and AngloGold Ashanti’s Iduapriem Mine to create the largest mine in Africa); the legal aspects of Gold Fields’ 2030 ESG commitments as well as managing ESG related risks; deployment and utilisation of innovation and technology including artificial intelligence in a manner cautious enough to ensure compliance with laws and mitigation of the associated risks; update our compliance systems to keep up with changing laws on privacy and data protection, cybersecurity threats, AML and anti-bribery corruption; and investing in improving the non-technical and soft skills of the team in areas like six sigma model, project management, business strategy and emotional intelligence to complement their excellent technical skills.