SETTING off to interview a bloke called Chip Goodyear who runs a mining company headquartered in Melbourne triggers a certain anticipation. I am braced for some leathery old bushwhacker, Barry Humphries in pinstripe suit, ready with a “G’day mate” and a batch of dubious mining data.

How wrong you can be. Charles Goodyear is an impeccably groomed American former investment banker who works out at the gym and prefers Hildon mineral water to Foster’s lager. The 46-year-old chief executive of BHP Billiton, the Anglo-Australian mining group, was bounced into the top job 17 months ago with the abrupt departure of Brian Gilbertson, the South Africa mining veteran remembered for his years running Gencor.

BHP, which started out with a silver mine in Broken Hill, New South Wales, had recently merged with Billiton, listed in London, and Gilbertson’s exit could hardly have come at a worse time. Goodyear, formerly chief development officer, found himself catapulted to the head of a company with 35,000 employees and annual sales of £10 billion.

Goodyear’s unexpected promotion won him a place in The Times Power 100 alongside Frank Chapman, chief executive of BG, and Mike Levett, chairman of Old Mutual.

Although based in Melbourne, Goodyear typically spends half of each month travelling. BHP has operations spread from northern Canada to Mozambique. There are investors to brief in New York and London and clients to see in Japan and China. It is a punishing schedule. But Goodyear looks well on it. “It obviously has its challenges. But if you get on the plane for 24 hours, the phone doesn’t ring, the e-mails don’t get any longer, and you can concentrate on reading and issues.”

Having a sense of humour helps. During a recent stock market roadshow in New York, fund managers pressed him for some instant good news. Investors are nervous about rising US interest rates, high commodity prices, and a slowdown in China, a huge, growing market for BHP Billiton. Goodyear told them: “I can’t help you with this. We have got a company that makes its decisions based on a ten-year horizon. But I’m happy to get you guys some teddy bears if that will help you sleep at night.” He got a few laughs.

Goodyear was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1958. He was brought up in Houston, Texas, where his father, Charles, worked for Exxon, the oil company. The family tree stretches back to Charles Waterhouse Goodyear, a famous US lumber baron (as opposed to the rubber pioneer).

Chip studied geology and geophysics at Yale, then did an MBA at Wharton. He spent much of the 1980s with Kidder, Peabody, the Wall Street investment bank. After a stint with Freeport-McMoRan, the natural resources group, Goodyear joined BHP in 1999 as chief financial officer. Following the merger, he was posted to London as chief development officer. He was named chief executive in January 2003.

Goodyear brought a down-the-line approach to the job. “Communication is number one,” he says, in his Texan drawl. “Talk to people. Next is honesty. You project an image of being straightforward with them, and you expect that in return. Thirdly, don’t play politics. That will disrupt an organisation faster than anything.”

He adds: “Focus on the objective of why we come to work every day. Ultimately, we are here to create value for shareholders, and everybody in the organisation ought to have that objective in mind. We’re not here to say, ‘how big is my office?’, ‘who got a better deal than I did?’, who’s got the better car priority space?’. Who cares about all that stuff?” As an American with experience of boards in the UK, Australia and South Africa, Goodyear has seen the corporate governance debate from all angles. Mining companies are generous payers — he stands to earn up to £2 million a year if performance targets are hit — but he argues that being paid for doing a good job is perfectly reasonable.

If targets are met, the payout to the executive will be small compared with the multiplier effect on the company’s share price. “Clearly there are excesses and nobody has a perfect system. But if they set the metrics and that’s achieved, it ought to be, ‘hey, job well done’.”

He believes there is a serious risk of driving boardroom talent underground. Private equity is booming, and there are plenty of alternatives open to public company chiefs who grow tired of the limelight.

“We’re in a dangerous period. Executives are going to say, ‘if you really want to spend 80 per cent of the time on the governance and 20 per cent on the business, that isn’t going to be as much fun. And then if I am successful, I get to see my name splattered all over the headlines. I think I’m going to go into the private equity world, where I can focus on those things that are critical, such as the independent audit report, but then spend time making money ’. And when you get paid, nobody knows about it.”

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