Every year Mining Journal launches its Most Influential Index to a mixed reaction and this year was no exception.

Each year we gain more traction with it. Although, still last year we got people emailing us as to why they were on it and what it meant. That's a difficult one to answer sometimes.

So how does it work? Well, the first step is to ask for nominations. We do this on social media, posting on Linkedin and, occasionally, on X. We reach out to trusted partners for their opinions and we look internally also, asking our editorial team at Aspermont for their thoughts too.

Side note to this is: YES you can nominate yourself, I love this energy.

There's usually little discrepancy. However this year the sticking point was around governance. China's Premier Xi Jinping made it to top of the pile in 2022, to 7 in 2023 and this year he was at 11. Not everyone on our 'editorial board' agreed with this and emails and Teams messages were flying around arguing the different points. "Are we really going to say that XXXX is more influential than the Chinese President?" one person asked in disbelief. Well, yes. This year we are. 

Times this conversation by about 30 and you're getting close to understanding the process.

Then, there's people who have moved jobs. Then, companies who have rebranded (sorry Future Coal, that's fixed now). 

So trends, I talked a bit about this in the part of the article I wrote (because, if you haven't realised this is a team effort!), and one of the things that jumped out was the amount of women has actually fallen this year. 

We've gone from 14 women to 12 this year (or, 24%) - and one of these women is sharing her spot with a man. I shared this information in a Linkedin post and received a lot of DMs and messages about this. Essentially we all want the industry to do better.

(So please, this is my thought: if you are a woman in this industry, do nominate yourself. If you work with a woman and she is a trailblazer, nominate her. Everything will be considered. Let's get more influential women recognised).

What else did we find? Well, the headline was that 2024 was the year that mining M&A went supersized.

Miners have been consolidating for several years, but now the really big players are starting to get invested. Glencore's 2023 bid for Teck fired the starting gun, and this year BHP turned up the temperature as it tried, unsuccessfully, to gobble up Anglo American.

It was Rio's huge deal with Arcadium which earnt the Anglo-Australian listed miner the top spot however, and Jakob Stausholm moved from 13 to the coveted No 1 spot.