Kentor Gold managing director, David Royle, has resigned due to personal reasons vacating the position on March 30.

David Royle was with Kentor Gold four years with with the  last three years as managing director.

During that time he lead the company's successful IPO and initial ASX listing, as well as established a strong springboard of exciting projects in the Kyrgyz Republic, particularly the Akbel Project.

Executive director, Hugh McKinnon, country manager for the Kyrgyz Republic, will be CEO until the results of the current drilling program are reviewed at Akbel and the requirements of the company are assessed as it moves forward.

BHP combines energy and metallurgical coal divisions under one leadership

BHP Billiton's Energy coal and metallurgical coal divisions will be brought together under a single customer sector group president.

The current president metallurgical coal, Dave Murray, will become president of coal, with responsibility for both the metallurgical coal and energy coal businesses.  He will continue to report to Chris Lynch, group president carbon steel materials. Dave Murray has deep experience in the coal industry and specifically in South Africa.

Chris Lynch says the integration of the Energy Coal assets into the broader Carbon Steel Materials group had been successfully completed and the next stage is to combine the coal businesses under a single customer sector group president.  He said the combination would further strengthen BHP Billiton's commitment to improving and enhancing the operations of the group's coal assets in Australia, South Africa, Colombia, the US and Indonesia. There will be no change to the group's marketing structure.