Freeport's Executive Chairman resigns

Freeport McMoRan's founder, James R. Moffett, is resigning as Executive Chairman of the Phoenix-based copper and gold company, according to news reports.   The Wall Street Journal said  "Moffett served as chief executive of the company and its predecessors between 1984 and 2003. He co-founded McMoRan Oil & Gas Co. in 1969 and lead its eventual merger with Freeport Minerals Co. In 1988, under his leadership, the company discovered Indonesia’s Grasberg mine, one of the world’s biggest for gold and copper."    It attributed his resignation to pressure from investor Carl Icahn, and the two-thirds drop in company stock in the past year.

The Arizona Republic stated that "For years, Freeport-McMoRan had been Arizona's most profitable and most valuable corporation in terms of stock-market capitalization. The company was worth around $38 billion as recently as the summer of 2014 but now is worth just $8 billion."

Freeport operates the giant Morenci copper mine in eastern Arizona [right, credit Freeport McMoRan].  The company projected sales of 4.3 billion pounds of copper in 2015.