Marius Kloppers may well have told staff it will be “business as normal” in a short video conference yesterday, but they would be wise to buckle up for a rollercoaster ride.

Under the 44-year-old South African, BHP Billiton is likely to become that little bit more aggressive in the marketplace than it has been under Chip Goodyear, the outgoing chief executive.

As one of the management team that drove the mega merger creating BHP Billiton in 2001, Mr Kloppers has forged a reputation as a wheeler-dealer.

Forthright, decisive and tough, it was he that Mr Goodyear picked to examine whether to mount the eventually successful counterbid for Western Mining Corporation (WMC), the miner much coveted by Xstrata two years ago.

That Mr Kloppers prized WMC from the hands of prior Billiton mentor Mick Davis, the Xstrata chief executive, was all the more satisfying.

Several months later, he tried to secure a far bigger iron ore price rise from Chinese and Japanese steel mills than they had agreed with rival Rio Tinto.

The tactic did not work despite weeks of fierce negotiations and critics damned his strategy as “politically naive”, yet supporters within BHP Billiton did not bat an eyelid.

Melbourne-based Mr Kloppers, where he lives with childhood sweetheart Carin, has spent the majority of his working life at what is now BHP Billiton.

After obtaining a degree in chemcial engineering from the University of Pretoria and an MBA from Insead, he worked for brief spells at Sasol, the South African petrochemicals company, and Mintek, a materials research outfits.

He joined Billiton in 1993 at the age of just 30, working initially in the aluminium side of the business before moving to a variety of operating and functional roles.

At the time of the BHP Billiton merger, he was in charge of Billiton’s coal and manganese interests. Mr Kloppers assumed the role of chief marketing officer in the merged business and created a central sales function for metals dug up by BHP’s teams around the world.

In his role as group president of nonferrous materials, Mr Kloppers is already responsible for just over 60 per cent of group earnings, covering copper, lead, zinc and nickel, as well as diamonds.

Insiders are certain that the impressive step up for Mr Kloppers – something the new chief executive refers to as an “extraordinary opportunity” – will not frighten him one bit.

And with the wave of merger and acquisitions activity sweeping through the mining industry, a few of BHP Billiton’s rivals will be looking nervously over their shoulders later this year.

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