The Monday Interview: Mike Davis, Chief executive, Xstrata

Mike Davis: mining's big gun Title: Chief executive, Xstrata Age: 44 Pay: $1m salary, $183,000 a year housing allowance, bonus of up to 100 per cent of salary, plus share options. Biggest business influence: "John Maree, who was head of Eskom. He created the space for me to grow. And Derek Keys [one of the non-executives at Billiton]. He was the First Minister in Nelson Mandela's government. He had an incredible perspective and wisdom."

Mick Davis is regularly described by those who know him as "punchy". The man charged with leading Xstrata, the mining company, to the biggest London float in more than a year would certainly land a weighty blow if he took the description literally. The heavily built South African has big hands, a generous midriff and a reputation for not suffering foods gladly.

"I give people the space and support to do their jobs well. I tell them when they haven't," he says in an accent which hails from Port Elizabeth on the eastern Cape.

Mr Davis, 44, is not short of confidence in his own abilities. Indeed when he has been passed over for promotion in the past, he hasn't moaned, he's quit. It happened at Eskom, the South African utilities group where the young Davis was made finance director at 29. "I left because they appointed someone else as chief executive. I quite liked the chap they appointed. I just thought it should have been me," he said.

He did more or less the same again last year at BHP Billiton, the mining giant. Mr Davis had been Billiton's finance director but when the merger with BHP came along he didn't fancy the chief development officer role he was offered in the enlarged group. "It was the right deal," he says. "But the result was a completely different company to the one I joined. I didn't think my personal assets would grow."

So he left to become chief executive of Xstrata, a little known diversified mining group based in Zug, Switzerland. The entrepreneurial Mr Davis had a vision of finding a transforming deal that would catapult the business into the mining big league dominated by London-listed companies such as Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Anglo American.

It could have been a wrong turning in career terms but the big man with the neatly clipped grey beard got lucky. Glencore, the privately owned Swiss group which owns a big stake in Xstrata, was in the process of floating its coal business in Australia under the Enex name. The management team was on the last leg of its institutional roadshow in America when the 11 September tragedy struck, sinking the float with it.

Mr Davis saw his chance and lined up a $2.5bn (£1.8bn) deal to buy Enex's 25 South African and Australian coal mines and announced a London listing to raise £650m to help fund it. "It [taking the job] could have been a wrong turning. But often in life opportunities present themselves and the skill is recognising when it happens," he says.

With stock markets being so volatile Mr Davis finds his float being viewed as a test case for others that are waiting in the wings. Doesn't that make him nervous? "I have been nervous. But there is a window of opportunity to do things and if you don't move then you lose that. People have said that others are looking at us to see how our float goes and then decide what they might do but the level of interest is very encouraging."

In some respects he faces a challenge. Investors might see another South African company trying to tap into London equity markets and think of names such as Old Mutual and Dimension Data which have come over here and bombed. But Mr Davis is confident. "Investors will differentiate. Our assets are located around the world. They are priced in dollars and sold in dollars. It is a hard currency earner."

Indeed Xstrata has chosen to list in London because of the City's mining knowledge. "London has re-emerged as the core provider of finance for diversified mining companies," Mr Davis says from a cramped meeting room in the London offices of his advisers, JP Morgan. "It was historically the centre at the start of the 1900s when it financed the original South African mining companies. Then it fell away. There was Lonrho and then Goldfields disappeared with various bids and counter-bids. There was just Rio Tinto [the old RTZ]. But when Billiton came on board [in 1997] it represented the regeneration of the sector and sector knowledge. For example when we floated Billiton there were just eight mining analysts. Now there are 20 to 30."

There are some issues he will need to deal with before the shares start trading on 25 March. One is the stock overhang represented by Glencore's 38 per cent stake. Another may be the past of Glencore, which was established by the Swiss commodities trader Marc Rich. Mr Rich spent 17 years in exile in Switzerland to avoid possible racketeering charges before being pardoned by Bill Clinton on his last day in office. "He's been out of the business for years," Mr Davis said.

There will also be a question over Xstrata's independence given the size of Glencore's stake. However, the recruitment of David Rough, Legal & General's former investment director, as non-executive deputy chairman should help soothe City nerves.

If the float gets away, the next step is more acquisitions. "We have three very specific targets we are looking at just now in the $1.5bn to $2.5bn value range," Mr Davis says.

If he can pull off a further deal or two, he might just propel Xstrata into the FTSE 100.

It will have been a long haul in a double quick time for the former accountant who says he enjoyed a "normal middle class" upbringing in South Africa and is a fervent follower of his Jewish faith.

Intriguingly for a man who has been so keen to get on, he says his career is not his main driving force. "I'm very committed to my career but it is not those kind of things that make people intuitively happy," he explains. "It is things like a decent set of friendships and other interests."

He now lives in Hampstead, north London, with his wife and children, though he spends the weekdays in Switzerland, made more comfortable by a $183,000 a year housing allowance.

Apart from cricket and golf, his main outside interest is education and the $1m a year man feels he may some day turn his back on the mining business in order to teach. "I used to teach in Witwatersrand and that remains a latent interest."