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Barrick Gold Corporation

Ex Glencore bosses try to snatch nickel asset – by Sarah Thompson and Anthony Macdonald (Australian Financial Review – August 19, 2018)

https://www.afr.com/

Mining giants Glencore and Barrick could have a prospective nickel and cobalt project taken from under their nose, if plans being hatched by ASX-listed Jervois Mining come to fruition.

As first reported by Street Talk on Sunday, Jervois has been making moves to win control of the Kabanga nickel and cobalt project in Tanzania, after the host government cancelled Glencore and Barrick’s joint hold of it in January.

The January cancellation was part of a broader push by the government to get a bigger share of its mineral wealth, but Glencore and Barrick have been upbeat in recent times about their chances of winning a fresh permit to explore and develop the asset.

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Nevada: Where the World Goes for Gold (Investing News Network – August 16th, 2018)

Investing News Network

This Investing News Network article is sponsored by Fremont Gold (TSXV:FRE).

Nevada may be one of the most geologically diverse mining jurisdictions in the world. Nearly every type of rock known to geologists can be found in the state’s desert landscape.

Nevada has been an important source of many of the world’s most critical base metals including copper, zinc and molybdenum. Today, Nevada leads the country in the production of lithium and, not surprisingly, the Silver State contains a wealth of precious metals, ranking as one of the top 5 global gold producers.

Nevada owes its unique geology and prolific gold production to the complex tectonic history of the northern Great Basin which gave rise to the widespread landscape of fault-dominated mountain ranges and valleys.

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Massive Barrick-Novagold gold mine project in Alaska receives key U.S. environmental permits – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – August 15, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Barrick Gold Corp. and Novagold Resources Inc. have been given a key governmental green light to build a massive new gold mine in Alaska, but uncertain economics amid a weakening gold price mean it’s unclear whether the capital-intensive project will ever see the light of day.

In a joint release, Barrick and its junior joint-venture partner Novagold said that they had received a number of U.S. federal government environmental permits that would pave the way for the development of the Donlin Gold project, which the duo first teamed up on more than a decade ago.

Donlin, in southwestern Alaska, is one of the world’s biggest undeveloped gold projects with 39 million ounces of gold held in the economically uncertain “resources” category.

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Barrick planning further mine sales, chairman Thornton says – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – August 11, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Barrick Gold Corp. plans to sell at least five more mines, as the company doubles down on its strategy to focus on profitable mining over growing its production.

In a wide-ranging town hall speech made earlier this week to employees, executive chairman John Thornton also made it clear that the company has no interest in buying Detour Gold Corp., despite a Bloomberg report a few weeks ago that said Barrick was an “undisclosed bidder” for the struggling junior gold company.

Barrick, the world’s biggest gold company by production, has been relentlessly selling assets over the past few years after its debt ballooned to US$15.8-billion in 2013 − the firm sank about US$8-billion into the construction of a South America mine that was eventually abandoned − and in the aftermath of a disastrous acquisition.

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Barrick Gold chair lashes out at mining ‘industry disease,’ doubles down on his strategy – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – August 11, 2018)

https://business.financialpost.com/

John Thornton, a latecomer to the industry who lives in an $81-million Florida villa, is facing a test to his leadership as investors lose confidence

With Barrick Gold Corp. about to lose its title as world’s largest gold producer, and its stock nearing a low-point for the year, executive chairman John Thornton called a town-hall meeting this week to insist his strategy is working and the rest of the industry has it wrong.

Describing it an “industry disease,” Thornton lambasted his rivals, bankers, researchers, shareholders and others who value growth in production over growth in profits, according to a partial transcript that Barrick posted on its website on Thursday evening.

“The whole industry gets itself into a bad habit,” he said. “It’s kind of an echo chamber, and they encourage each other towards what I would call bad behaviour. They don’t see it that way, but I see it that way.”

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Barrick Says China Partner for Copper ‘Makes All Kinds of Sense’ – by Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – August 10, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Barrick Gold Corp. Executive Chairman John Thornton says the Canadian miner is looking at its copper assets “very seriously” to see if it makes sense to form a copper company with one or two partners, most likely from China.

“The question for us on copper is, ‘Can you take the copper assets, combine them with another party, or even two parties and build a first-tier global copper company over time?’ ” Thornton told employees on Wednesday. “Now in answering that question, the likelihood that your partner in that endeavor will be Chinese is very high.”

“The question for us on copper is, ‘Can you take the copper assets, combine them with another party, or even two parties and build a first-tier global copper company over time?’ ” Thornton told employees on Wednesday. “Now in answering that question, the likelihood that your partner in that endeavor will be Chinese is very high.”

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Barrick says copper operation in Saudi Arabia not affected by diplomatic dispute – by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud (Mining.com – August 8, 2018)

http://www.mining.com/

A representative of Canadian gold giant Barrick Gold (TSX, NYSE:ABX) told the Globe & Mail today that the company’s Saudi operations are not affected by the current diplomatic dispute between Ottawa and Riyadh.

In an email to the newspaper, spokesman Andy Lloyd said that Barrick has a strong relationship with Ma’aden (TADAWUL:1211), the 50-per-cent state-owned company with which the miner operates the Jabal Sayid copper mine, located 350 kilometers north-east of Jeddah, in the western part of the country.

“We expect that partnership will continue to deepen over time,” Lloyd told the news outlet. The Toronto-based firm gained the Jabal Sayid project when it acquired copper miner Equinox in 2011 for $6.8 billion.

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[Kelvin Dushnisky] Manitoba-raised mining exec goes global – by Martin Cash (Winnipeg Free Press – August 8, 2018)

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/

Dushnisky doesn’t forget local roots while preparing to take control of South African gold producer

When he was going to high school in Birtle 30 years ago, Kelvin Dushnisky said he would never have imagined that he’d one day be moving to Johannesburg, South Africa, to take over management of the third-largest gold-mining company in the world, AngloGold Ashanti. But that’s exactly what Dushnisky will be doing in a couple of months.

The former president and second in command at Toronto-based Barrick Gold, where he’s risen up the ranks for the past 16 years, said he has never forgotten his Manitoba roots as he’s travelled the globe negotiating complex mineral resource enterprises with local and national governments and workers alike.

In fact, he said his small-town upbringing is one of the valuable assets he is able to bring when negotiating and planning out investments of hundreds of millions of dollars around the world.

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Barrick Gold makes China investor push as markets slump – by Susan Taylor (Reuters U.S. – August 1, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

TORONTO (Reuters) – Barrick Gold Corp will make a bigger push to attract institutional investors in China under a new deeper-ties pact with Shandong Gold, aimed at bolstering its shareholder base, executives told Reuters.

Bruised by a strong U.S. dollar, the price of gold is nearing a one-year low, with speculators holding record short positions. China, the world’s largest producer and consumer of gold, is a largely untapped investor source for western miners, said Barrick’s China President Woo Lee.

“We’re establishing relationships with some of these large investors in China – that’s something that we haven’t had before,” Lee said in an interview. “Because Shandong knows the market far better than we do, they are potentially a good source of introductions to the best investors.”

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Editorial: C-suite departures hit Barrick, Teck, Lundin – by John Cumming (Northern Miner – July 31, 2018)

http://www.northernminer.com/

The sudden and unexpected departure in late July of Barrick Gold president Kelvin Dushnisky — and more tellingly, the lack of a named replacement and the unusual vacancy in Barrick’s CEO spot since mid-2014 — stands in stark contrast to the orderly transitions announced by Teck Resources and Lundin Mining just two days later.

At Teck, long-time chairman Norman B. Keevil said he will retire from that role in October, at which time global business executive Dominic Barton will replace him as chairman (Barton will become a Teck director a month earlier). Also in October, Norman Keevil III, who has been a Teck director since 1997, will become vice-chair.

Teck announced that Norman B. Keevil and long-standing director and deputy chairman Warren S. R. Seyffert will retire completely from the board at year-end, at which time Keevil will be named chairman emeritus and special advisor to the board in what Teck calls “recognition of his pivotal role in helping build Teck into a major force in the mining industry.”

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China goes for gold with overseas mining projects – by Rurika Imahashi (Nikkei Asian Review – July 30, 2018)

https://asia.nikkei.com/

A secure supply is seen as critical to the country’s economic and strategic goals

TOKYO — Chinese gold miners are on the hunt for mines overseas, spurred by robust prices of the precious metal. Already the world’s largest gold producer, China’s sees overseas mines as part of the country’s long-term strategic goals of expanding its economic influence and building up its manufacturing might.

Part of this agenda involves working with foreign partners. In early July, Canada’s Barrick Gold, the world’s largest bullion producer, said it would expand cooperation with China’s Shandong Gold Group in developing gold mines.

“This agreement will allow us to take our partnership to the next level,” said Barrick Executive Chairman John Thornton about the “enhanced strategic cooperation agreement” with Shandong Gold.

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The world’s most insatiable consumer digs deep into Canadian miners – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – July 28, 2018)

https://business.financialpost.com/

How Chinese investment and pull increasingly drive our mining sector

After spending billions of dollars and two decades trying — and failing — to build a mine on the border of Chile and Argentina, Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp. is reverting to a predictable strategy: it wants to partner with a Chinese company.

Earlier this month, the largest gold miner in the world announced that it asked Shandong Gold Group Co. Ltd, a smaller, younger, less well-known state-owned Chinese company, to study whether its long-delayed Pascua-Lama mine could be economically built if the Chilean part of the deposit were left in the ground — something Barrick’s own geologists and engineers thus far have not justified to management’s satisfaction.

It is far from Barrick’s first partnership with a Chinese company, but in the past it partnered by selling stakes in its mines and forming joint ventures.

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Barrick Gold shares extend slide after results disappoint – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – July 27, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The world’s biggest gold producer can’t catch a break. Shares in Barrick Gold Corp. fell 6.3 per cent on Thursday, amid a broad market selloff in the gold sector, after it released weaker-than-expected financial results Wednesday evening, and it failed to provide any new details on a geopolitical stalemate in Tanzania.

Thursday’s session was the second significant selloff in Barrick shares this week and its worst single-day performance in nine months. The pain in the gold sector wasn’t confined to Barrick.

Goldcorp Inc. lost 5.9 per cent of its value on Thursday, its worst showing in almost a year, after it posted a $131-million net loss in the second quarter. Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. also had a bad day in the stock market, losing 4.9 per cent of its value, after its quarterly results also fell short of estimates.

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Barrick’s ‘Mr. Fixer’ Kelvin Dushnisky lured to rival AngloGold with bigger role – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – July 24, 2018)

https://business.financialpost.com/

The jump to Johannesburg allows Dushnisky to finally ascend to the helm of a major gold company

Barrick Gold Corp. announced Monday that its president Kelvin Dushnisky will depart in August, and relocate from Toronto to Johannesburg, where he will join AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. as chief executive officer.

The jump from Barrick, as of last year the world’s largest gold company, to AngloGold, the third-largest, allows Dushnisky to finally ascend to the helm of a major gold company.

While at Barrick, for 16 years, he rose through the ranks, joining the board of directors and becoming a president in 2015. But because the company has no chief executive, Dushnisky always laboured under the shadow of the executive chairman John L. Thornton, who joined the company from Goldman Sachs in 2012.

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Barrick Exit Raises Power Questions at Biggest Gold Miner – by Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – July 23, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Kelvin Dushnisky’s departure as president of Barrick Gold Corp. raises the question of whether his replacement will get more, or less, power at the world’s largest gold producer under Executive Chairman John Thornton.

Dushnisky, 54, is set to take over as chief executive officer of Johannesburg-based AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. as of Sept. 1, the miners said Monday. Dushnisky, a 16-year veteran at Barrick, worked up the corporate ladder to co-president, then president, where he became responsible for much of the work reducing debt and rationalizing operations. But high-level decisions were understood to be made by Thornton.

Jim Gowans served as co-president of Barrick with Dushnisky in 2014, when the company was struggling beneath a crippling debt burden. “We were selling operations, optimizing them, cutting the head office,” said Gowans, now CEO of Arizona Mining Inc.

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