BHP has promoted Adrian Wood to CFO following Vandita Pant’s resignation, the second senior executive exit since Brandon Craig became CEO in July, the Financial Times reported earlier on Thursday.
Pant, who joined BHP in 2016 and has been CFO since 2024, will return to London next year, where she previously worked as a banker at Royal Bank of Scotland and ABN Amro. She will stay until after the group’s first-half results in February to hand over.
Pant oversaw a period of strong growth and ran BHP’s capital allocation framework, which boosted dividends and buybacks while funding copper expansion and potash development. She was CFO during BHP’s two aborted bids for Anglo American in 2024 and 2025, when some Australian investors welcomed its decision not to overbid.
Wood joined BHP in 2015 as head of investor relations after an investment banking career at UBS and Macquarie, where he led oil and gas and metals and mining research. He has since worked across BHP’s financing teams and now heads its Australian minerals projects.
Chief commercial officer Rag Udd, named CEO of lithium company Albemarle in September, leaves early next year. Both Pant and Udd had been seen as contenders for the top job.
In a note to staff, Craig said Wood would bring “sound judgment, commercial discipline” to the role, and praised Pant’s financial rigour.
BHP shares dipped about 1% in Sydney but are up more than 30% this year, valuing Australia’s largest company at $206bn.
Separately, BHP plans to restructure its Western Australia Iron Ore division as part of a wider cost-cutting drive to cope with rising expenses and softer prices, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The unit, which has more than 16,000 employees and contractors, has already cut 300 on-site workers, and further reductions are expected, mainly among white-collar staff.
The overhaul of the Perth-based business is expected to simplify management and move more support functions, including some technology work, directly under the mines they serve. The changes build on work begun under former CEO Mike Henry and are expected to reach other divisions, which could also face job cuts.
Rio Tinto has also moved to strip out layers of management and bureaucracy under CEO Simon Trott, slimming down around iron ore and copper. Miners’ once-stellar margins are under pressure as Chinese demand cools, costs climb and Beijing tightens its control over procurement.
BHP says it remains the Pilbara’s lowest-cost major iron ore producer, with mining costs of about $16.40 a ton in its last financial year, against benchmark futures prices nearer $90. Rio’s Pilbara unit cash costs were about $25 a ton in the first half of 2026.