"The board completed a thoughtful and robust process and we believe Peter's 30-plus years of mining industry leadership, together with his admirable performance while serving in the CEO role on an interim basis, make him the right choice to lead Hudbay," chairman Stephen Lang said. Lang himself was appointed as Hudbay's chairman in October, replacing Alan Hibben as agreed under a settlement with Waterton Global Resource Management over the bitter battle for a board overhaul. Kukielski was one of the nominees put forward by Waterton and one of the 11 agreed nominees put up for election at the miner's AGM in May last year.
Kukielski said he was honoured he had the board's full confidence to serve as CEO.
"We will continue to focus on being a leading base metals mining company to the benefit of all of our stakeholders," he said.
He said Hudbay, which has mines in Canada and Peru, had a high-quality portfolio of both operating assets and growth opportunities and was "well-positioned to continue to unlock value within our own portfolio".
The company's shares had tanked in November on a September quarter net loss of US$274 million, mainly due to a $242 million writedown on its planned Rosemont copper project in Arizona where it was planning legal action to regain permitting. Hudbay shares, which have ranged from C$10.42 to $3.98 over the past year, closed down 2.8% yesterday to $4.49 to value it at $1.2 billion (US$0.9 billion).