EXCLUSIVE: Deshnee Naidoo named Vale base metals director, finance & business development

Deshnee Naidoo has been appointed as director, finance & business development, base metals, at Brazilian miner Vale, Fastmarkets understands.

Her position is effective from January 1, 2021, and will see Naidoo lead and direct the Vale base metals finance team, responsible for financial strategy, planning, forecasts and supervising the investment cycles for the base metals division.

She will also be responsible for all financial management stewardship for Vale Canada Ltd and its subsidiaries, including management reporting, budgeting, forecasting and analysis of opportunities associated with the base metals business.

As well, Naidoo will lead the global business development agenda for Vale’s base metals covering transactions for mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and structured operations, from strategic origination to execution.

Naidoo, who will report to Luciano Sani, Vale chief financial officer, was most recently chief executive officer of the Zinc International business at Vedanta Resources from 2014 to 2020. She also took on the role of CEO Africa base metals during her tenure at Vedanta.

She had worked at Anglo American from 1998 to 2014, where she held a number of executive positions including in the CEO office as well as CFO for Anglo American’s thermal coal business.

Naidoo told Metal Market Magazine in an executive profile in April 2020 that she is focused on mining and the positive benefits that it can bring.

“I’m wholly driven by the impact, if channeled properly, that mining can have on local stakeholders, especially communities. I really want to continue doing that. I don’t have a specific end in mind but I’m just going to continue at the pace I’ve created,” she said in that interview.

What to read next
Until now, aluminium has been hard to move, not hard to find. Global aluminium supply had remained technically intact, even as output was curtailed in parts of the Gulf, inventory buffers were drawn down or repositioned, and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz was severely disrupted.
Global aluminium producers face heightened uncertainty over power supplies, with oil and gas prices elevated by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows, sources told Fastmarkets.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) may have exported less than half of the volumes allocated to miners for the fourth quarter of 2025, extended to the end of the first quarter of 2026, under the country's new quota system, sources told Fastmarkets in the week to Wednesday March 25.
Guinea’s long-anticipated intervention in the bauxite market is beginning to take shape.
Fastmarkets is extending the consultation period for the methodology of several of its black mass payables indicators and prices, and is also proposing changes to the names of CIF South Korea and EWX Europe black mass prices.
Fastmarkets is inviting feedback from the industry on the pricing methodology for its fob and cif manganese ore indices, as part of its annual methodology review process.