Leadership

Who is accountable, and for what.

A board of eight, of whom six are independent non-executive directors, and an executive committee of eight. Both founders remain on the board; neither holds an executive role.

Board members: 8
Independent directors: 6
Executive committee: 8
Board meetings, FY2025: 8

Board of directors

The board

The board met eight times in FY2025, including twice at operating sites. Non-executive directors meet without management present at least twice a year, chaired by the Senior Independent Director.

Helena Marchetti

Co-founder and Non-Executive Chair

Chair since 2019, director since 1996 · London · Not independent

Helena co-founded Quintel in 1996 as a two-person minerals trading partnership and served as Commercial Director for twenty-three years before taking the chair. She began her career on a physical metals desk in Rotterdam and has spent her working life in the commodity between the mine and the customer. She chairs the Nomination and Governance Committee.

Nomination and Governance (chair)

Kwabena Osei-Bonsu

Co-founder and Non-Executive Director

Director since 1996 · Accra · Not independent

Kwabena co-founded Quintel and served as Chief Executive from 1996 until his retirement from executive duties in 2019. A metallurgist by training, he built Asankran, negotiated the group’s first mining lease and set the operating principles that still govern the business. He remains on the board as a non-executive director and does not sit on any committee requiring independence.

Margaret Achieng Otieno

Senior Independent Director

Appointed 2018 · Nairobi

Margaret spent twenty-two years in central banking and financial regulation in East Africa, latterly as a deputy governor with responsibility for financial stability. She provides the board’s independent channel for shareholder and employee concerns and leads the annual board effectiveness review.

Audit and Risk
Remuneration

Lars Henriksen

Independent Non-Executive Director

Appointed 2016 · Copenhagen

Lars was Chief Financial Officer of a Nordic industrial group with operations in eighteen countries and has served on audit committees in the industrial and shipping sectors for more than a decade. He chairs the Audit and Risk Committee and is the board’s designated financial expert.

Audit and Risk (chair)
Nomination and Governance

Prof. Yolanda Neves

Independent Non-Executive Director

Appointed 2020 · Lisbon

Yolanda is Professor of Environmental Engineering with a research career in mine waste, tailings geotechnics and post-closure land use. She has served on two independent tailings review boards outside the group and chairs Quintel’s Sustainability and Safety Committee, which meets before every board meeting and reports to it in full.

Sustainability and Safety (chair)

Dr Joseph Kabwe

Independent Non-Executive Director

Appointed 2021 · Lusaka

Joseph is a former Dean of the School of Mines at the University of Zambia and has advised regional governments and development finance institutions on mining policy and local content regulation. He brings the board direct knowledge of the Copperbelt’s labour market, supply base and community expectations.

Sustainability and Safety
Remuneration

Nadia Belkacem

Independent Non-Executive Director

Appointed 2022 · Paris

Nadia spent her executive career in steel and ferroalloys, latterly as head of raw materials procurement for a European steel group, and understands the group’s manganese and bauxite customers from the other side of the contract. She chairs the Remuneration Committee.

Remuneration (chair)
Audit and Risk

Hassan Al-Marzouqi

Independent Non-Executive Director

Appointed 2023 · Abu Dhabi

Hassan has twenty-five years in project and structured finance for energy and infrastructure across the Middle East and Africa, including the financing of two greenfield mining developments. He advises the board on the funding structure for the Bagoé development.

Audit and Risk

The two founders are classified as not independent and do not sit on the Audit and Risk, Remuneration or Sustainability and Safety Committees. Helena Marchetti chairs the Nomination and Governance Committee; the board has determined that a founder chairing that committee is appropriate for a private company of this ownership structure, and the Senior Independent Director leads the annual board effectiveness review to counterbalance it.

Executive committee

The people who run the business day to day

The executive committee meets weekly and holds a monthly operations review at which every high-potential safety incident across the group is examined individually.

Thandeka Mokoena

Chief Executive Officer

Appointed 2019 · Based in Johannesburg

A mining engineer by training, Thandeka spent eleven years underground in South African platinum and manganese operations before joining Quintel in 2011 as General Manager at Asankran. She led the group’s Zambian business through the 2015 copper price collapse without a single involuntary redundancy, was appointed Chief Operating Officer in 2016 and Chief Executive on the retirement of the founder in 2019. She holds a BSc in Mining Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand and a Mine Manager’s Certificate of Competency.

Iain Rutherford

Chief Financial Officer

Appointed 2017 · Based in London

Iain joined Quintel from a mid-tier diversified miner where he was Group Financial Controller, and before that spent nine years in resource banking. He is responsible for the group’s deliberately conservative balance sheet policy, including the standing limit of 1.5 times net debt to EBITDA through the cycle that has held since 2018. He is a Chartered Accountant and holds an MA in Economics from the University of Edinburgh.

Emeka Nwosu

Chief Operating Officer

Appointed 2020 · Based in Johannesburg

Emeka has run open pit, underground and heap leach operations across five countries in a twenty-four year career, including seven years with Quintel as General Manager at Lubumba and then Mbengwe. He owns the group’s critical control management programme and chairs the monthly operations review at which every high-potential incident across the group is examined individually. He holds a BEng in Mining Engineering from the University of Nigeria and an MBA from Warwick Business School.

Dr Amina Chérif

Chief Sustainability Officer

Appointed 2021 · Based in Conakry and London

Amina is an environmental engineer who spent a decade in West African water resource management, including four years advising the Guinean government on the environmental regulation of the bauxite corridor, before joining Quintel. She led the group’s Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management conformance programme and the resettlement framework applied at Fatala. She holds a doctorate in Hydrogeology from Université de Montpellier.

Dr Ana Fontes

Chief Technical Officer

Appointed 2018 · Based in London

Ana is an economic geologist who has taken two deposits from discovery to production in her career. At Quintel she is accountable for mineral resource and ore reserve estimation, exploration strategy and project studies, and she signs the internal governance certificate that accompanies the group’s annual resource statement. She holds a PhD in Economic Geology from Imperial College London and is a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

Boubacar Diallo

Chief People Officer

Appointed 2022 · Based in Accra

Boubacar joined Quintel in 2009 as a human resources superintendent at Asankran and has held roles at four of the group’s operations since. He is responsible for the national workforce commitment, which requires every operation to reach 90% national employment within five years of first production, and for the apprenticeship and graduate programmes that make it achievable. He holds an MSc in Human Resource Management from the University of Ghana.

Rajiv Menon

Chief Commercial Officer

Appointed 2015 · Based in Dubai

Rajiv runs marketing, logistics and trade finance from the group’s Dubai office, covering five commodities across three continents. He spent fourteen years in physical metals trading before joining Quintel and negotiated the multi-year alumina-indexed contracts that underpin the Fatala investment case. He holds a BCom from the University of Mumbai and is a graduate of the London Metal Exchange education programme.

Rachel Adeyemi

General Counsel and Company Secretary

Appointed 2019 · Based in London

Rachel advises the board on governance, mining title, host government agreements and disputes across eight jurisdictions, and is the executive owner of the group’s anti-bribery and corruption programme and the Speak Up channel. She practised for eleven years at an international law firm’s energy and natural resources group before joining Quintel. She is admitted in England and Wales and in Nigeria.

Succession and tenure

The group has had two chief executives in thirty years. Kwabena Osei-Bonsu held the role from 1996 to 2019 and was succeeded by Thandeka Mokoena, who had been Chief Operating Officer for three years and a Quintel general manager for five before that. The handover was announced fourteen months in advance and executed on the announced date.

Long tenure has obvious risks, and the board treats them as such. Non-executive directors serve an initial three-year term with a normal maximum of nine years. The Nomination and Governance Committee maintains a rolling succession plan covering the chief executive, every executive committee role and every general manager, reviewed annually and stress-tested against an immediate-departure scenario.

Remuneration in outline

Executive remuneration comprises salary, an annual bonus and a long-term incentive tied to a rolling three-year performance period. Two features are worth stating plainly:

Safety and sustainability outcomes act as a gateway in the variable pay framework. They can reduce an award to zero. They cannot increase one. The board adopted this structure in 2021 specifically to remove any implication that executives are paid a premium for not hurting people.
A fatality at any managed operation results in no annual bonus for the Chief Executive and the Chief Operating Officer for that year, regardless of every other measure.

The full remuneration policy and the FY2025 outcomes are set out in the Annual Review.

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Governance and ethicsCommittees, policies, internal control and the Speak Up channel.Group structureLegal entities, host government interests and beneficial ownership.Reports and disclosuresAnnual Review, policies and the full governance documentation.