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Husky Energy’s new pack leader
Gary Park For Petroleum News
Husky Energy, Canada’s third largest exploration and refining company, has again gone outside its Canadian base to pick a chief executive officer.
Asim Ghosh, 62, who has made his name in the telecom sector, will occupy the spot vacated by John Lau, who is leaving the Calgary head office June 1 after 17 years to oversee the expected spin-off of Husky’s Asian operations.
The transfer of power — however much it must be viewed as a vote of no-confidence in the company’s long-serving senior executives — is hardly a surprise.
Husky is controlled from Hong Kong by billionaire tycoon Li Ka-shing, who personally and through Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., owns 72 percent of the company.
The word was already out that Lau’s successor would likely come from the Asian region.
“To me it just reeks of the status quo,” said Dennis da Silva, an analyst with Middlefield Capital. “You have an insider becoming the CEO. So to me, nothing really changes.”
Yet the company line has Ghosh selected to grow a company that has posted solid earnings growth over the last decade, while struggling to maintain conventional volumes in Western Canada while its stock values have dropped below levels last seen at the end of 2008.
A Wharton MBA graduate, Ghosh worked in Toronto for multinationals Procter and Gamble, was senior vice president of Canadian brewing company Carling O’Keefe and, most recently, was CEO of India-based Vodafone Essar, previously controlled by Hutchison Whampoa.
On Husky board Husky’s co-chairmen Victor Li and Canning Fok said Gosh has “demonstrated his vast executive experience and sound business judgment on Husky’s board of directors. … The board believes Ghosh’s global perspective and proven ability to take companies to the next level will advance Husky’s mandate of strategic growth and creation of shareholder value.”
Whatever else, he has a full plate of growth prospects in Canada, the United States, Greenland and Asia, including advancing the C$2.5 billion Sunrise oil sands project in partnership with BP (although no one has said whether BP’s trials in the Gulf of Mexico will affect those plans), developing an estimated 33 billion barrels of bitumen in Alberta’s three main oil sands regions and determining the future of Husky’s Asian assets.
In his 11 years at the helm of Vodafone Essar and its predecessor company, Ghosh oversaw growth in the number of subscribers to 68 million from 100,000 — a performance Husky says demonstrates his skill in utilizing new technologies and capital investment.
But da Silva is not so sure that building a list of phone subscribers will translate so easily to a mature energy industry.
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