Commodities & Metals

Will Executive Reshuffle Help Freeport-McMoRan?

Paul Ausick

Published: April 5, 2016 10:45 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 11:08 am

Mining giant Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE: FCX) announced Tuesday morning that it has parted company with the executive management team at its oil and gas division. Four executives, including the division’s chief executive, chief operating officer, chief financial officer and general counsel, are departing, and Freeport is bringing the division’s management under the corporate umbrella as an operating division.

Mark Kidder, formerly the vice-president of operations for the oil and gas group, has been named as executive vice-president of operation of the division. Kidder came to Freeport in 2013 along with the company’s acquisition of Plains Exploration and Production.

The four executives who have been let go are former CEO James Flores, former COO Doss Bourgeois, former CFO Winston Talbert and former General Counsel John F. Wombwell. Like Kidder all four joined Freeport with the Plains acquisition.

There is little doubt now that the $9 billion that Freeport spent in 2013 to acquire Plains and McMoRan Exploration was a bad, or at least badly timed, decision. Freeport’s main argument for the acquisition was that the company needed to diversify out of the copper and gold mining business. Within a year of the acquisitions, though, crude oil prices began falling and with them any chance that Freeport would show any near-term benefit from the deals.

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