David Constable

David Constable is a Canadian engineer and businessman. He was appointed the CEO of Sasol, an energy and chemical company, in July 2011, and announced that he would leave the role in spring 2016. He concurrently served as the company's president.

Prior to his tenure at Sasol, he was employed with Fluor from 1982 to 2011, including Group President, Global Operations. He serves as an independent director of ABB Ltd, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Rio Tinto plc, Rio Tinto Ltd, and is a member of the American Petroleum Institute, and the US Business Council.

Constable has a civil engineering degree from the University of Alberta. He also graduated from advanced management programs at both Thunderbird School of Global Management and Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

During Constable's tenure at Sasol, he set Sasol on a new course in difficult times. He modernized a sleepy parastatal and turned Sasol into a modern global petrochemical company. A major restructuring program he introduced will save R7.9 billion annually in costs and significantly trim headcount by 4,900 staff and up to 20,000 service providers. This restructuring program, coupled with a low oil price response plan which is conserving up to R75 billion over 42 months has allowed Sasol to weather very low commodity prices in their key markets. In addition, Sasol will shift to being a more international chemical company once its multibillion-dollar North American ethane cracker and derivatives plant comes on line in 2018/2019. The decision to progress with an ethane fed cracker in the US was taken relatively quickly and Sasol's cracker will be in the first wave of new assets brought on stream to capitalize on cheap US ethane derived from shale gas. This should provide shareholders with good long term value based on low cost feedstock. Also, building an ethane cracker as opposed to a GTL plant was a break with previous strategy of only building where Sasol had a technology advantage.

Of particular note, under Constable's leadership, Sasol delivered the best two financial year's in the company's 65-year history, breaking all previous earnings and dividend payout records. In addition, the company hit it's all-time high share price during Constable's term, R645.10 per share.