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Four senior employees of Barrick Gold Corp. have reportedly been arrested in Mali in the latest sign of rising tensions between the Toronto-based mining company and the authoritarian military regime that runs the West African country.
The four Malian employees of Barrick were arrested for alleged financial crimes, according to a report by Reuters, but no details have emerged.
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Barrick Gold Corp. chief executive officer Mark Bristow is raising the possibility that he may retire in 2026. Mr. Bristow took over as CEO in 2019 after Toronto-based Barrick acquired Randgold Resources Ltd., the Africa-focused mining company he founded and ran for about two decades.
Hard-nosed, detail-oriented and outspoken, the South African is one of the most driven executives in the mining industry. At Barrick, he has stickhandled multiple difficult situations, including patching up multiyear mining contract spats with the governments of Tanzania and Papua New Guinea.
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London’s bullion market association is abandoning a jurisdictional challenge to a lawsuit by Tanzanian claimants, setting the stage for a British trial into allegations that the association is wrongly giving human-rights clearance to gold products from Barrick Gold Corp.’s controversial North Mara mine.
The lawsuit was filed in London in 2022 by relatives of two Tanzanian men allegedly killed by security forces at the North Mara gold mine, but the jurisdictional argument had delayed the trial for nearly a year.
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Barrick Gold Corp. is signalling it could be in for a protracted slog in Mali, as the big Canadian gold miner pushes back on the military government’s demands for a greater share of the country’s mining spoils.
Barrick on Wednesday said Mali is seeking unspecified changes to the tax, financial and legal regime at its Loulo-Gounkoto mining operations. The site is on track to produce 535,000 ounces of gold this year and is the company’s biggest operation by far in Africa.
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Barrick Gold Corp. is being accused of using the virtual format for its annual general meeting to suppress critical questions from stakeholders. After holding a hybrid AGM last year that allowed stakeholders to show up in person, the Toronto-based gold mining company, which is the world’s second biggest by market value, went to a virtual-only format this year.
Virtual AGMs have attracted the ire of some shareholder-rights groups. In an open letter to members of the S&P/TSX 60 Index in April, a group of 38 institutional investors, advisers, portfolio managers and non-profits argued that online meetings can undermine shareholder rights, by allowing companies to cherry-pick questions, or change the wording of them.
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Barrick Gold Corp. is facing mounting pressure in Mali as the country’s military regime seeks to boost its control of the multibillion-dollar mining sector at a time of growing Russian influence over its economy.
Mali’s junta, which seized power in a coup in 2021 and later forged an alliance with Russian troops, has been targeting the mining sector for more than a year with a controversial audit of the industry and a new mining code to authorize greater state control of mining companies.
Barrick Gold’s (TSX: ABX)(NYSE:GOLD) ongoing push to expand its global portfolio has prompted the company to revisit its presence in the Latin American market.
The world’s second largest gold miner has in the past year been particularly interested in Peru, where it was the second top gold producer until 2018. According to local newspaper Gestión, Barrick recently submitted a request to obtain a mining concession for 400 hectares in the southern Puno district.
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Barrick Gold Corp. says its subsidiaries have settled a British court case with 10 Tanzanian villagers who alleged that police and security guards had caused deaths and injuries near the company’s North Mara gold mine.
The two subsidiaries in Tanzania did not admit any liability in the case at the High Court of Justice in London, Barrick said in a terse one-sentence statement on its website this week. It gave no other details.
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Barrick Gold says it has found uranium in the drinking water of an open section of its Lumwana copper mine in Zambia, forcing it to halt the water supply and switch to other water sources for its workers in the section.
The Zambian mine has become increasingly important to Barrick’s future. The Toronto-based company has announced plans for a US$2-billion expansion at Lumwana to create one of the world’s biggest copper mines, with construction to begin late this year and production from the project expected by 2028.
‘Just look at the so-called critical minerals industry today, lithium’s a bust, so is nickel’ — Barrick chief
The critical mineral industry required to power the energy transition away from fossil fuels is in an unhealthy state and running ahead of itself, says Barrick Gold Corp.’s chief executive Mark Bristow, who heads the world’s second-largest gold company.
Bristow said the mining sector is entering an era dominated by the demand for metals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt, but the projects containing these critical minerals are often led by promoters more focused on the short-term benefits rather than by “responsible miners” that are in it for the long run.
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The power structure at the upper tiers of the world’s second biggest gold company is shifting with the diminution in the role played by long-term Barrick Gold Corp. executive chairman John Thornton. Toronto-based Barrick on Wednesday announced that Mr. Thornton has moved from the role of executive chairman to chairman, a position that carries fewer responsibilities, lower pay, and much more clearly-defined parameters.
Barrick said the change in Mr. Thornton’s role was driven in part by governance considerations. In a regulatory disclosure alongside its latest quarterly earnings, Barrick said that considering Mr. Thornton had achieved key objectives following the company’s 2019 acquisition of Randgold Resources Ltd., this was both the right time for him to transition to chairman, and for the company to do away with the executive chairman role.
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Barrick Gold Corp. ABX-T is disputing an account by a Panamanian official about an alleged meeting between one of its executives and First Quantum Minerals Ltd. in Panama to discuss a possible buyout deal. Vancouver-based First Quantum said this week it is considering a range of merger and acquisition options as it attempts to stem the financial damage caused by the closing of its giant Panama copper mine.
Ebrahim Asvat, a former adviser with the Panamanian government, told The Globe and Mail on Thursday that Juana Barceló, president of Barrick’s Pueblo Viejo operations in the Dominican Republic, was in Panama in early January, and met with people at First Quantum.
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First Quantum Minerals Ltd. has begun 2024 looking like a winning stock, but its early rebound may add another layer of risk to an investment that has been reeling from setbacks related to the company’s huge copper mine in Panama.
Just ask anyone who jumped on the rally by Laurentian Bank of Canada last July, in the hope of a bidding war for the struggling lender. By the time the bank announced six weeks later that no buyer had emerged, the shares were down nearly 30 per cent.
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Barrick Gold Corp. is reportedly considering a fresh takeover bid for embattled Canadian copper miner First Quantum Minerals Ltd., after making an earlier approach in the middle of last year.
According to a report on Wednesday, Toronto-based Barrick contacted some of First Quantum’s biggest shareholders late last year to ascertain their interest in a takeover. Barrick would need their support in the event of a transaction.
Barrick Gold Corp. has spoken with some of First Quantum Minerals Ltd.’s major investors to gauge their support for a potential takeover, after the sudden closure of its flagship mine left the Canadian copper producer reeling and wiped out more than half its market value.
Barrick chief executive officer Mark Bristow approached some of First Quantum’s largest investors late last year, according to people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified as the talks were private. It wasn’t immediately clear if Barrick has made a fresh approach to First Quantum, and there’s no guarantee it will make a formal offer.
