In this issue of The Northern Miner and at an event at our Canadian Mining Symposium at Canada House in London on April 24 and 25, we are awarding to Barrick Gold founder Peter Munk our Lifetime Achievement Award for transforming Barrick over several decades from a small producer into the world’s biggest gold producer in gold output and market value.
It’s an award that has been in the works for months, but it takes a bittersweet turn with Munk’s passing on March 28, 2018. Months ago he had graciously extended his thanks for the award in an email, but noted he was too ill to travel by air to accept any award in person.
Instead, Barrick president Kelvin Dushnisky is slated to accept the award on Munk’s behalf in London, and a celebratory dinner we’ve arranged that evening in Munk’s honour will now take on more poignancy. Continue Reading →
It’s an extraordinary story about an extraordinary man who became one of the most legendary entrepreneurs in Canadian history. But at its core it is also a love story. It’s a tale about Peter Munk’s life-long romance with Canada — the country that welcomed him after he and 14 members of his family fled Hungary and the Nazi’s death camps in the final year of the Second World War.
Since then the iconic entrepreneur and founder of gold mining giant Barrick Gold has donated $300 million to institutions in Canada, primarily to healthcare and education in recent years, before his death on March 28, 2018, at age 90.
Last November, Munk and his wife Melanie gave $100 million to the Toronto General Hospital’s Peter Munk Cardiac Centre — the largest gift to a single Canadian hospital in history. Continue Reading →
ATAC working with Barrick Gold plans extensive drilling at the Rackla property north of Mayo
ATAC Resources is planning its biggest drilling program in more than five years at its Rackla gold property north of Mayo in central Yukon, according to company president Graham Downs.
The 1,742 square kilometre property consists of three zones — Rau, Orion and Osiris — which in turn contain a number of gold deposits and targets for ongoing exploration.
ATAC plans to “build on and expand on all the gold zones we have out there, and to be able to demonstrate we have, kind of, the critical mass to make things work there,” said Downs. He expects about 50 people will be working for ATAC. Continue Reading →
ATAC Resources Ltd. April 4 outlined plans for roughly 20,000 meters of drilling at the Rackla Gold property in the Yukon.
At roughly C$13 million, this program included a C$6 million investment by Barrick Gold Corp. for exploring the Orion gold project at the center of the massive Rackla property and C$7 million from ATAC, which will explore Osiris and Rau, located on the east and west ends of Rackla, respectively.
“We are excited to get started on what will be the largest drilling campaign since 2012 on the Rackla Gold property,” said ATAC President and CEO Graham Downs. Continue Reading →
Peter Munk, the Canadian immigrant who founded Barrick Gold Corp. in the early 1980s and transformed it from a small-scale operation into a global empire, has died. He was 90.
He died Wednesday in Toronto, according to a company statement. No cause was given.
A serial entrepreneur, Munk’s ventures ranged from high-end electronics to real estate. But it was as founder of Toronto-based Barrick, the world’s largest gold producer, that he amassed most of his wealth, the bulk of which he pledged would go to charities after his death.
Pierre Lassonde, Chairman of Franco-Nevada, long-time friend of Peter Munk, and fellow inductee of the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame discusses Peter Munk’s life and legacy in mining and impact on Canadian society through his philanthropy.
Munk was one of Canada’s most high-flying, international deal makers, as well as one its most generous benefactors
On May 6, 2016, just three days after a wildfire engulfed Fort McMurray, Alta., and forced the evacuation of more than 80,000 people, business icon and philanthropist Peter Munk donated $1 million to the Red Cross to help displaced Alberta families.
Measured against all of Munk’s charitable donations — which have totalled more than $200 million — it was a small amount. But this gift was particularly poignant for Munk, because the spectre of families fleeing down the highway from Fort McMurray reminded him of his own flight from Nazi-controlled Europe.
“Watching the events unfold in northern Alberta reminded me of my own past as a refugee,” Munk said of his donation. “I know what it is like to lose everything.” Continue Reading →
With great sadness, Barrick Gold founder Peter Munk passed away today. Last Spring I wrote a lengthy essay on who should be included in a historic Top Ten List of Canadian Mining Men. Peter Munk made the number one spot. Here is why. – Stan Sudol
1) Peter Munk – Canada’s Godfather of Gold (Barrick Gold)
In November 2005, Peter Munk launched a takeover bid of historic Canadian gold miner Placer Dome agreeing to sell certain assets to Goldcorp. By the following spring, the takeover was complete and in less than 25 years, this upstart junior miner with two small gold operations – an Alaskan placer mine and a half interest in a small northern Ontario gold operation called Renabie – had created the largest gold mining empire in the world.
Barrick had no dual class share system like Teck to prevent a takeover – as did Goldcorp when it was launched in 1994 until 2004 – or a sympathetic Premier like Brad Wall in Saskatchewan who stopped the BHP Billiton buyout of Potash Corp. Ontario Premier McGuinty was absolutely silent when historic Ontario base-metal producers were bought by foreigners! It was a prey or predator scenario and Peter Munk came out on top.
For that reason alone, Munk deserves the top spot, as 2006 witnessed the foreign takeovers of legendary base-metal miners like Inco by Vale, Falconbridge/Noranda by Xstrata (subsequently taken over by Glencore) and Alcan swallowed by Rio Tinto in 2007. And let’s not forget the foreign takeovers of Canada’s three major steelmakers, Algoma, Dofasco and Stelco, a hollowing out of the Toronto Stock Exchange that we have yet to recover from!
Canada’s corporate elite – shell shocked at the frenzy of foreign takeovers in the middle of the last decade –could thank Munk – Hungarian born to a Jewish family – for saving at least one globally significant Canadian mining corporation that is still based in Toronto! Continue Reading →
Peter and Melanie Munk seated. From the $100 million donation event at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, (September 19, 2017) said to be the largest contribution to a Canadian hospital in history. In total, Peter and Melanie Munk have donated more than $285 million to charities and public institutions in Canada and abroad. (Barrick Photo)
Peter Munk died at the age of 90 surrounded by family in Toronto. He was an immigrant and a mining magnate who gave back to his adopted country and left an unparalleled legacy, Eric Reguly writes.
Peter Munk, a powerful man in a small frame, would claim he wasn’t afraid of death. It was frailty that terrified him; it meant that he could not play the game he had been playing all his life – building businesses, taking enormous risks, thundering like Lear when it all went wrong, then picking himself up, tilting his trademark Borsalino hat on his head and starting all over again, brimming with optimism.
Mr. Munk, the Hungarian-born entrepreneur who turned Barrick Gold into the world’s biggest gold miner, just couldn’t stop, even as his health began to fail. He was in his late 70s when he spotted a clapped-out Warsaw Pact naval base in tiny, corrupt Montenegro and turned it into Porto Montenegro, one of the Mediterranean’s biggest and most glamorous yacht marinas and resorts. It is now home to some of the yachts of the Saudi royal fleet.
At that age, he didn’t need the money or the aggravation. To him, there could be no such thing as retirement. He wanted to keep working, even if he had the wealth to spend his sunset years enjoying the yachts, the chalets and the private jets that went with his status as one of Canada’s best-known businessmen, patriots, Holocaust survivors and philanthropists. Continue Reading →
Peter Munk’s impassioned and gracious speech begins at the 33 minute mark at his $100 million donation to the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, (September 19, 2017) said to be the largest contribution to a Canadian hospital in history. In total, Peter and Melanie Munk have donated more than $285 million to charities and public institutions in Canada and abroad.
Munk extolled Canadian graciousness he experienced when he emigrated here in the late 1940s. “You opened the door. You gave us everything,” he said, referring to Canada as “paradise.”
Barrick’s Peter Munk Heads Top Ten Most Important Mining Men in Canadian History https://bit.ly/2GSUL0d
A serial entrepreneur, Munk’s ventures ranged from high-end electronics to real estate. But it was as founder of Toronto-based Barrick, the world’s largest gold producer, that he amassed most of his wealth, the bulk of which he pledged would go to charities after his death.
Peter Munk, the Canadian immigrant who founded Barrick Gold Corp. in the early 1980s and transformed it from a small-scale operation into a global empire, has died. He was 90.
He died Wednesday in Toronto, according to a company statement. No cause was given.
A serial entrepreneur, Munk’s ventures ranged from high-end electronics to real estate. But it was as founder of Toronto-based Barrick, the world’s largest gold producer, that he amassed most of his wealth, the bulk of which he pledged would go to charities after his death.
Born in Budapest on Nov. 8, 1927, to Lajos Munk and Katharina Adler, Munk fled Nazi-occupied Hungary in 1944 with his father’s family. His mother, who left the marriage when Peter was 4 and had survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, committed suicide in 1988. Continue Reading →
TORONTO (Reuters) – Barrick Gold Corp, the world’s largest producer of bullion, cut the 2017 compensation for its top two executives to reflect a challenging “shareholder experience” and operations at some mines.
Shares in the Canadian miner declined 15 percent last year, even as the price of gold gained 11 percent. In 2017 Barrick had a third cyanide spill in 18 months at its Veladero mine in Argentina and struggled under an export ban for its Acacia Mining unit in Zambia that is still not resolved.
The Toronto-based company cut the 2017 long-term bonus for Executive Chairman John Thornton by 18 percent to $4.3 million. That reduced his total compensation to $7.7 million, down 9.4 percent from $8.5 million in 2016. Continue Reading →
A wave of African tax increases is engulfing some of Canada’s biggest mining companies, leaving them scrambling to negotiate with newly assertive governments that have lost patience with traditional tax deals.
First Quantum Minerals Ltd. is the latest Canadian company to be hit with a massive tax bill. Zambian authorities have told the company to pay an additional US$8-billion in taxes and penalties for failing to pay proper duties on imported supplies over the past five years.
First Quantum’s chief executive, Philip Pascall, admitted on Wednesday that he had been completely blindsided by the shock announcement. “I literally heard about this the day before yesterday,” he told investors in a conference call as he tried to mollify their concerns. Continue Reading →
VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Canadian miner Barrick Gold has reported significant damage to the power plant that supplies electricity to the Porgera joint venture, following a 7.5 magnitude earthquake that struck Papua New Guinea (PNG) on February 26.
However, the NYSE- and TSX-listed miner said it does not expect the Porgera JV’s 2018 guidance of 4.5-million to 5-million ounces of gold to be affected at this stage.
No employees or contractors were injured because of the incident. Barrick said it is supporting its subsidiary Barrick Niugini (BNL) to protect the safety of those at site, and in the local communities, as recovery efforts get under way. Continue Reading →
According to the World Gold Council primary gold production hit another record in 2017 after nine years of growth in output, albeit at a much slower pace.
Global gold production totalled roughly 105m troy ounces in 2017. Output is up 525 tonnes or nearly 17m ounces since the start of the decade.
The top 10 listed, non-state owned gold miners are responsible for nearly 30% of global output. The ranks of the top producing companies have stayed remarkably stable, but the next few years will shake-up the industry’s top tier. Continue Reading →
MELBOURNE, Feb 27 (Reuters) – Miners in northwest Papua New Guinea reported some damage to infrastructure following a powerful magnitude 7.5 earthquake that hit on Monday, as projects in the resource-rich region assess the impact on their operations.
Barrick Gold Corp said a power station that supplies its Porgera gold mine had been damaged, while Ok Tedi Mining Ltd said a landslip had blocked a road and damaged pipelines to its copper and gold mine in the Star Mountains.
The PNG government said it had sent disaster assessment teams to the rugged Southern Highlands about 560 km (350 miles) northwest of the capital, Port Moresby, following the quake early on Monday and a series of aftershocks. Continue Reading →
