Anglo American

Richard Herselman is the head of metal recycling & trading at Anglo American. He is an accomplished commercial executive and strategic thinker with extensive experience across multiple commodities, industries, geographies and cultures.

Few industries demand as much resilience, strategic foresight and global fluency as metals and mining. Over the last 15 years, Richard Herselman has embodied these qualities to lead commercial transformation across multiple commodities and markets, driving operational relevance through strategic clarity, market insight and disciplined execution.

Fueling this leadership is a foundation of deep academic training combined with hands-on experience in some of the industry’s most complex environments. Herselman holds an M.Sc. in metals and energy finance from Imperial College and a B.Com honours in finance from the University of the Witwatersrand. His grounding in resource economics and derivative finance has informed a global career that spans trading floors and boardrooms alike. From trading and risk management to recycled metals and pricing architecture, his expertise extends across the pillars defining the industry’s long-term competitiveness.

At Anglo American, Herselman applies this expertise to lead a business unit he built from the ground up five years ago. He was appointed to create a new commercial platform for recycled steel and non-ferrous metals. This initiative has since matured into a global desk operating across physical markets and derivatives. He built the capability from first principles, aligning it with broader sustainability goals while ensuring market-grade commercial performance. The result is a trading business that supports Anglo American’s growth agenda and positions the company to lead in a low-carbon future.

“Herselman’s credibility in metals and mining stems from his senior roles and the sustained ability to connect commercial models to market realities”

Herselman’s credibility in metals and mining stems from his senior roles and the sustained ability to connect commercial models to market realities. At GFG Alliance, he served as global head of commodity price risk, implementing cross-commodity trading and hedging strategies across steel, iron ore, scrap, aluminium, zinc and carbon credits. His work allowed the team to quantify and manage price exposure across complex, vertically integrated value chains.

Earlier in his career, Herselman led the iron ore origination desk at Noble Group. He managed a multimillion-tonne physical trading book and was responsible for end-to-end deal structuring, from customer engagement to contract execution. These transactions, often across geographies and currencies, deepened his expertise in physical markets and gave him the commercial agility that has since become a hallmark of his leadership.

Herselman has also influenced how the industry sets and understands commodity prices. While at The Steel Index in 2008, he developed the benchmark 62 percent Fe Iron Ore Index, which is now the foundation of over one billion tonnes in iron ore derivatives trading globally. This innovation brought standardization and transparency to a market that was, until then, opaque and relationship-driven. The index transformed iron ore from a bilateral commodity into a globally traded asset class, accelerating financialisation across the mining sector.

Across his roles, Herselman has consistently demonstrated the ability to lead in volatile, complex environments. At Anglo American, he recently led the refinancing of the group’s balance sheet—a multiinstrument transaction involving bonds, cross-contingent loans, equity, and foreign exchange hedging. The transaction was awarded Deals of the Year 2024: Corporate Finance by the Association of Corporate Treasurers.

His leadership style is pragmatic, analytical and results-driven. His background, which includes research, broking, marketing and strategy, gives him a rare ability to move between strategic vision and operational execution without friction.

In an era when the metals and mining sector must reconcile profitability with sustainability and operational scale with regulatory complexity, Herselman brings precise and adaptive leadership anchored in market logic and long-term value creation.