Sasol CEO steps down

The Sasol chief David Constable will not be renewing his contract when it expires next year. He will be staying on as a consultant however, ironically closer to his family. The news filtered through two days ago. In an increasingly global world it is possible to commute and that is exactly what he has been doing. He is Canadian, turns (or turned) 54 this year, and has been at the company since his appointment in July of 2011. Prior to working at Sasol, Constable was at Fluor Corporation, the US engineering and construction company, that are specialists in the oil and gas industry, he is a civil engineer by trade.

I suspect what has happened here is that lifestyle choices for even high earners is becoming more important, in a world where people are richer than the prior generation. How much, i.e. what is the number, that one needs in order to retire at the same level? Well, in a local context, if you can generate 35 thousand Rand per 1 million Rand invested in the equities market, per annum, what would you need to live on? That is providing that you do not eat into the capital at all. In the context of a high powered earner (one must not always assume that they have great expenses) perhaps 55 is an age where they can retire and do what they want to do. I am not suggesting that being the CEO of Sasol is not what David Constable wanted to do, all I am saying is that it is hard to commute across the globe to family on a regular basis. The weigh up of lifestyle versus income, versus pressures of the job and being available all of the time takes its toll. You could argue that it is a good problem to have.

Either way, he has quit, and that is not good for shareholders and the business. I think that there is more than enough quality to appoint a local person for the job, hopefully an engineer with enough management experience. It is a very complex business, with complex plans to morph into a more competitive global chemicals business in North America, with an enormous glut of feedstock. That would be a good future for the business.