I have read with interest, and some disagreement, Adele Simmons’ article on Dec. 15 on the subject of South African divestment (“Skeptics were wrong; South Africa divestment worked,” Business).
At the time of divestment, I was chairman of FMC Corporation and we had several facilities in South Africa which were under increasing pressure from those that were aggressively supporting the Leon Sullivan principles. To abide by these principles, companies were required to close their South African facilities.
I looked into the treatment of our South African employees and the principles we were using to run our South African companies and concluded South Africa and the FMC employees in South Africa were far better if we continued to run the companies.
We did and we did so quite successfully.
— Robert Malott, former chairman, FMC Corporation
