Barrick Gold Corporation

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Barrick Gold Corp. is seeking to align the bulk of its executives’ compensation with the gold company’s performance and is expected to require top managers to hold their stock until retirement.

After a tumultuous year where Barrick’s stock plummeted 50 per cent and the company recorded nearly $14-billion (U.S.) in writedowns, the miner is considering a plan that would require its executives to hold their shares until they leave the company.

Currently, executives are paid a mix of cash, stock options, restricted share units and performance-based share units. They are not required to hold their Barrick shares until retirement and can exercise their stock options at certain dates.

“That would be a step in the right direction,” said Chris Mancini, an analyst with the Gabelli Gold Fund, which holds 2.9 million Barrick shares. “To the degree that this could have executives think toward long term, that would be a positive development,” he said.

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The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Peter Munk admits it: he is not handing over his pride and joy in the best of condition. “If I were to [look at it] as a photograph, a snapshot in the moment of time, I would be unhappy,” he said in a detailed interview in his office this week.

If he’s in the dumps, there’s good reason. This last year has been one of the worst in the history of Barrick Gold Corp., and plenty of the damage was self-inflicted. Fixing up the company during a bear market for gold will be a major challenge for John Thornton, his handpicked successor.

Mr. Munk, 86, announced his retirement from Barrick on Wednesday. The lifelong entrepreneur will finally step aside next spring, paving the way for Mr. Thornton to put his China-influenced stamp on the company.

Mr. Munk’s accomplishments at Barrick are too lengthy to list. In three decades, he took a company that started with US$20-million in the bank and built the world’s biggest gold producer, acquiring several industry stalwarts along the way and beating the Oppenheimers at their own game. Mr. Munk had the time of his life as he built Barrick into a powerhouse.

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http://uk.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Barrick Gold Corp investors have taken in stride news that the world’s largest gold producer may consider hedging its gold exposure, but they are roundly panning its plan for more diversification into other commodities.

John Thornton, who was confirmed after markets closed on Wednesday as Barrick’s next chairman, told reporters he would consider revisiting a hedging strategy for selling the company’s output because of the volatility of gold prices.

He also said he thinks Barrick, which already has a copper sideline, is well placed to look more at copper and perhaps at other commodities, once it puts its recent troubles behind it.

That pronouncement stung some Barrick shareholders, many of whom are invested in the Toronto-based miner only because they see a bright future for the gold price.

“It’s like saying to the market, once I recover from all the bad decisions I have made and paid back the mountains of debt I incurred doing it, I am going to go out and do it all over again, but not in the commodity I’m in right now,” said John O’Connell, the head of wealth management firm Davis Rea Ltd.

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The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

John Thornton admits it: building relationships with Barrick Gold Corp.’s shareholders did not go as smoothly as he planned this year. “I can think of better ways to start,” he quipped in a wide-ranging interview at the Toronto-based miner’s head office on Thursday.

But controversies over pay are the least of his problems now. As Barrick’s next chairman, he becomes leader of a company with falling production, excess debt, a stock price near a 20-year-low, and retained earnings of minus US$4.7-billion to show for its 30-year history.

Turning around this company will be a massive feat, especially given that the falling gold price is putting serious strain on Barrick’s cash flow.

Mr. Thornton, like his predecessor Peter Munk, believes that forming Asian partnerships is key to overcoming Barrick’s challenges and ensuring its future growth. But even he acknowledged that potential partners will have reservations about Barrick after seeing how badly the company screwed up the now-idled Pascua-Lama project.

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The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

John Thornton has laid out his vision for Barrick Gold Corp.: a more diversified mining company that can tackle big projects by accessing capital and partners in Asia. With his leadership, he thinks Barrick is in position to become a world-leading company, not just in gold but in “a range of minerals.”

“That’s where I’d like to see Barrick go,” he told reporters. His comments indicate that the world’s biggest gold producer could undergo a significant facelift in the years to come. Mr. Thornton even suggested that hedging, an extremely unpopular strategy among gold investors and one that previously backfired on Barrick, is something the company should be “carefully following at all times.”

Mr. Thornton was officially declared the Barrick’s next chairman on Wednesday after Peter Munk, 86, retires at next year’s annual meeting.

In a joint meeting with reporters, Mr. Munk talked about how he feels the world’s centre of gravity has shifted from West to East, and that Barrick needs a leader who can access capital and key business leaders in that country.

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The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Outgoing board co-chairman Peter Munk welcomes former Goldman Sachs executive John Thornton as new board chairman.

A major shakeup on Barrick Gold Corp.’s board of directors Wednesday included the replacement of chairman and legendary founder Peter Munk and the departure of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney as a longtime director.

The world’s largest gold miner also announced Jim Gowans, the former chief executive of De Beers Canada, is the new chief operating officer and the nominations of veteran Canadian money manager Ned Goodman and three others to the board in moves it hopes will revive the company’s tarnished image and weak share price.

“This has been a stormy year for Barrick,” said Munk, who welcomed co-chairman John Thornton to his new job as sole chairman.

He said he was going to leave in 2012 and sail around the world with his wife, but too many things “hit the fan” at the beleaguered miner — namely cost overruns building its prized Pascua Lama project, soaring debt and the falling gold price, which have helped carve the company’s share price by more than half.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/

Peter Munk built Barrick Gold Corp. (ABX) into the world’s largest gold producer by expanding into Africa and South America. Now former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President John Thornton is betting on China to help revive the beleaguered company’s fortunes.

At a Dec. 4 board meeting, Thornton will be confirmed as Barrick’s next chairman, succeeding Munk, 86, who plans to retire at the Toronto-based company’s next annual shareholders meeting after three decades, according to people familiar with the situation.

Thornton, 59, currently co-chairman, already helps to oversee long-term corporate strategy. As part of that remit, he’s trying to establish partnerships with Chinese companies that may include investment in Barrick and future mining projects, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing a private matter. China Investment Corp., the country’s largest sovereign wealth fund, is among potential partners Barrick has met with, the people said.

The leadership change at Barrick comes at the end of a difficult year for the company. It has lost 41 percent of its market value in 2013 while debt levels have soared after a slump in gold prices, rising operating expenses and a cost blowout at an $8.5 billion mining project in the Andes.

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The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Five years ago, the Financial Post asked Peter Munk when he planned to retire from Barrick Gold Corp. His response: “When they kick me out.” But that wasn’t really true.

Mr. Munk is as stubborn and proud a businessman as there is. And despite the numerous calls for him to step aside in recent years, he was always going to leave on his own terms.

On Friday, Mr. Munk’s 86th birthday, Barrick disclosed that he plans to retire. No timeline was provided, though sources said the departure will most likely come at next year’s annual meeting, when the company plans to introduce new directors in a long-awaited overhaul of its board.

Investors have gotten increasingly fed up with the board in recent years, as it has made some awful strategic errors and approved some outlandish pay packages for company insiders. Mr. Munk, the founder and chief authority at Barrick for 30 years, was the key figure behind every move and the natural lightning rod for investor dissent.

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The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

TORONTO and VANCOUVER — Peter Munk, a refugee from Hungary who built Canadian businesses in real estate, oil and electronics, is getting ready to bid farewell to the company he transformed into the world’s largest gold producer.

The fedora-sporting tycoon, who turned 86 on Friday, is about to leave Barrick Gold Corp. The industry behemoth he started with a small stake in a Northern Ontario mine is now struggling to regain investor confidence following two years of declines in prices for the precious metal.

Booms and busts have defined Mr. Munk’s life. He was born into a wealthy banking family in Budapest, but the Nazi occupation of his homeland during the Second World War forced them to flee. The Munks used most of the family fortune, held in cash and gold, to board a train in 1944 to Switzerland. About four years later, Mr. Munk left England for Toronto, where he lived with his aunt and uncle.

In Toronto, he helped found sound electronics maker Clairtone Sound Corp., whose high-fidelity products were promoted by the likes of Hugh Hefner and Frank Sinatra.

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The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Barrick Gold Corp. publicly announced the pending retirement of chairman Peter Munk on Friday, after a week in which bankers faced a tepid response to the company’s $3-billion (U.S.) share sale.

Barrick said Friday that it expected to update investors before year-end on various initiatives to renew its board, following discussions this year between directors and institutional shareholders regarding compensation practices and governance. The initiatives include “succession in the chairman role at the company, consistent with Mr. Munk’s desire to retire as chairman,” Barrick said.

The message that Mr. Munk would announce his retirement by year-end had been quietly conveyed by some bankers working on Barrick’s big share sale over the past week, according to sources familiar with the situation. Some investors had indicated they wanted more clarity on the board revamp before agreeing to buy any stock.

One asset manager, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was told by a banker advising Barrick on Monday that an announcement on Mr. Munk’s future would come by year-end.

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The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

The pressure on Barrick Gold Corp. founder Peter Munk is becoming so intense that he may soon have to do what he has so far resisted – announce a timetable for his own departure from the company he built into the world’s largest gold producer.

Major Barrick shareholders are boycotting a huge $3-billion (U.S.) stock offering, demanding that the company speed up the pace of change on its board. The focal point of that board has always been one man, the charming tycoon who created Barrick.

Mr. Munk, who turns 86 on Friday, is a Canadian business legend, and rightly so for what he has built. Yet he has also become the symbol of a company that has beaten up shareholders through badly timed acquisitions, cost overruns at mines, writedowns and stock sales that dilute their ownership. The latest financing is earmarked to pay down a $15-billion debt load – much of it taken on for the disastrous purchase of Equinox Minerals Ltd. – and will increase Barrick’s share count by about 16 per cent.

Amid all that, Barrick’s board has done little to dispel the notion that Mr. Munk makes all the big decisions.

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