senior management changes

POL announced this week that Ken Hellsten would take over from Jon Lea as managing director and that Jon would move to the Technical Director role. Alan Tough would also move to focus on the Carina development.

Anybody got a view on these changes? I spoke with Jon at an AMEC briefing and was impressed with his knowledge of the operation and what it would take to get it up and going (even more so compared to the other speakers there).

I don't know too much about Ken and what he might bring to the role. I did do a bit of quick googling to find that he's kinda been all over the place since Ravensthorpe. Not sure if that means his skills are in demand or that nobody wants to keep him long. I hope its the former. I'm not sure of the full extent of his involvement with Ravensthorpe other than at he was project director for at least part of the time. Getting iron ore to market is a heck of a lot easier than doing so for nickel laterite so I suspect that is a vote in his favour (yes, even though they have since shut it down).

I am kinda suprised at the apparant (lack of) impact of POL's progress so far. Increased resources? nothing. Great metallurgical results? nothing. Change in management? nothing. The note in the quarterly report which said there was a high expection of a resource upgrade for stage 1? nothing.

My orginal thoughts on POL was that even though there was (at least in the short to medium term) only a modest resource base, that the advantages in rail and ports for YIOP as well a having the Lion Group as a major shareholder made it fairly likely this will get up and going and provide a fairly reasonable return on an investment. Anybody know of any reason to change this view? I don't think the GFC is going to have a hugely detrimental impact come 2011-2012.