Word: moffett
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Welcome to the one-hand-washes-the-other world of "Jim-Bob" Moffett, a former University of Texas football star, geologist and amateur Elvis-impersonator who built Freeport into a mining behemoth with annual revenues of almost $2 billion. Moffett himself is an F.O.S., or friend of Suharto, the ousted dictator of Indonesia, a country that is now a fuse in search of a match. An often violent election campaign leads up to voting on June 7 that could bring to power reformers long critical of Freeport...
...Moffett's Dale Carnegie routine worked wonders when Suharto ran the show. There were afternoons of golf with the ruler and friendships with his family and business cronies. Indeed, Suharto interests own a multimillion-dollar stake in the Grasberg mine, which surely did not hurt Moffett's effort to maintain mining rights there on favorable terms. The deal was so sweet, in fact, that Freeport has long been the world's lowest-cost producer of copper, a key industrial metal...
...this is not a particularly good time to be in the mining business, what with the price of commodities bouncing off all-time lows. Freeport's profits have gone down the shaft, with earnings off 33% in its last quarter, to $129 million. Perhaps that's one reason why Moffett and other senior executives skipped the company's annual meeting last month. Certainly he's used to confrontation, having had to deal with vociferous environmental and social activists who in years past have carried picket signs proclaiming JIM-BOB MOFFETT KILLS FOR PROFIT...
...case. The company's stock last week closed at about $14, down from $36 three years ago. Low copper and gold prices, which the company obviously can't control, clearly have hurt; but some shareholders also complain that despite a cost-cutting campaign dubbed "Hunker Down and Go," Moffett's 1998 compensation of $4.5 million plus stock options is out of line with Freeport's sagging performance...
...company's connections with Suharto might encourage the new government to re-evaluate even the revised contracts, or to further jack up royalty payments, just as copper prices seem to be turning up. That in turn could erode the firm's low-cost structure. Even worse, Jim-Bob Moffett's old friends in high places would no longer be there to help...