BHP Billiton, the Anglo-Australian mining group, has appointed Wayne Murdy, the former chairman and chief executive of Newmont Mining, the world's largest goldminer, to its board as a director.

The appointment of Mr Murdy, 64, will go some way to addressing concerns that BHP's board lacks hands-on mining experience. He had hard-rock mining exposure at Newmont between 1992 and December 2007. Before joining Newmont, Mr Murdy, an accountant by training, spent 15 years in financial positions with Getty Oil and Apache Corporation, the oil and gas company.

Don Argus, the BHP Billiton chairman, said that Mr Murdy's experience in the natural resources area would prove particularly useful to the company. He said: “Wayne will be an excellent addition to our board and we are very pleased that he has agreed to join us. His depth of senior management experience and knowledge of the industry will be an asset to the company.”

Mr Murdy, who is also a director of Qwest Communications, the internet group, has been chairman of the International Mining Association.

Mr Murdy's appointment, which brings to 14 the number of people on the BHP board, comes less than a fortnight after the company agreed to set up a joint venture with Rio Tinto. It would see the two groups bringing together their iron ore operations in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Rio struck that deal after pressure from shareholders to scrap a $19.5billion (£12billion) deal with Chinalco, China's state-owned metals group, under which the Chinese would have acquired a substantial stake in Rio.

However, BHP's tie-up with Rio hit hurdles this week when China indicated that it would initiate an antitrust investigation into the miner's joint venture.

State officials in China said that the planned deal with BHP had “a strong monopolistic flavour”.

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