Mining veteran Rick Menell has joined the board of Africa-focused gold producer Perseus Mining as a nonexecutive, independent director.

"I am extremely pleased to welcome Rick Menell to the board of our company. Rick is a very high calibre individual whose diverse work and life experiences will bring new perspectives that will be invaluable in helping Perseus reach its full potential.

"His deep understanding of the people and the mining industry on the African continent is perfectly suited to joining the leadership team of a growing, Africa-focused company like Perseus, that has ambitions to become a leader of the gold mining industry on the continent," says Perseus chairperson and CEO Jeff Quartermaine.

Menell's business career has spanned over 40 years and he has held senior leadership roles at various Africa-based resources companies.

Trained originally as an exploration geologist at Cambridge and Stanford universities, Rick worked as a geologist in Canada, the US and South Africa before spending time as an investment banker for the mining industry in New York and Australia with JP Morgan. After a period as an executive director for Delta Gold in Australia, working on new gold mines in Australia and gold and platinum projects in Zimbabwe, he returned to South Africa in 1991 and rejoined the mining industry there as FD for diversified mining company Anglovaal Mining.

He led Anglovaal Mining from 1996 as CEO and then executive chairperson until 2004. During this time, he managed the restructuring, transformation and modernisation of the group, including major investments in new platinum, gold, manganese, chrome, iron-ore, coal and nickel mines in South Africa, new ferrochrome and ferromanganese smelters in South Africa and investments in copper and cobalt mining, smelting and refining in Zambia. This work continued when he merged Anglovaal with Patrice Motsepe’s ARM to form African Rainbow Minerals, where he remained deputy chairperson, and also CEO of subsidiary Teal Mining and Exploration, until he left the group in 2008.

Up to 2011, Menell also served as president of the South African Minerals Council, chairperson of Tourism South Africa, chairperson of Bateman Engineering, deputy chairperson of Harmony Gold and of Associated Manganese Mines, and a director of Standard Bank Group, Telkom South Africa and Mutual & Federal Insurance. He has been a director of the World Gold Council, senior adviser to the World Trade Organisation and the IOM, and a Mining Council member for the World Economic Forum. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society (London), and of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

In 2011, he joined Credit Suisse investment banking group as a senior adviser, working on transactions in all sectors, and throughout sub-Saharan Africa, leaving the group on its merger with UBS in 2023.

He has retained an active involvement in leadership in the mining and mining supplies industries, retiring recently as deputy chairperson of Gold Fields and as senior independent director of the Weir Group (UK). He remains an independent nonexecutive director at Sibanye-Stillwater, a precious and energy-transition metals mining company listed in Johannesburg and New York, having served for several years as lead independent director.

He has also been active throughout his career in the nonprofit sector, serving on numerous boards including the Business Trust, the National Business Initiative, Business Leadership South Africa and the Centre for Development and Enterprise, all in South Africa. He is founding co-chairperson of City Year South Africa youth service organisation, a trustee of the Foundation at the University of the Western Cape and a member of the advisory board of the African Leadership Academy. His activities focus on secondary, tertiary and post-tertiary education and on active citizenship such as the SA Solidarity Fund, where he served as a full-time volunteer executive in a team dealing with health and humanitarian consequences of the Covid pandemic. He headed a funding effort that has raised about $250-million in support of urgent programmes for everyone in need, both citizens and non-citizens. 

He has been involved in the founding and funding of a similar new initiative in 2023: the Resource Mobilization Fund. This has been set up at the request of the South African President to engage the private sector to assist in dealing with the enormous national challenges of power and water supply, failing transport infrastructure and eroding rule of law through public-private partnerships.

ASX- and TSX-listed Perseus owns and operates the Edikan mine, in Ghana, as well as the Sissingué and Yaouré mines, in Côte d’Ivoire.

It is also in the process of acquiring the Nyanzaga gold mine, in Tanzania, through its acquisition of fellow ASX-listed miner OreCorp.