Barrick Gold Corporation – Page 57

Canada: A Global Mining Powerhouse – by Cy Gonick (Canadian Dimension – Jan/Feb 2011)

May 18, 2011

Canadian Dimension is a Canadian leftist magazine founded in 1963 by Cy Gonick and published out of Winnipeg, Manitoba six times a year.

Most Canadians are not aware of it but with the help of the Canadian state, corporate Canada is beginning to throw its weight around the Global South – specifically, in metal mining locations of South America, Mexico, Africa and Asia. This has been a mainly recent development, taking off in the 1990’s but really accelerating over the past decade. Today, Canada’s metal mining industry accounts for about 12 percent of all direct investment abroad, second only to financial services.

Why are Canadian mining companies shifting their investments to the Global South? The reason is twofold. First, in Canada the easy to find ore has already been found so that new properties being developed are low-grade, high cost marginal projects. Second, besides giving diplomatic support, Canadian governments have introduced tax measures and the Export Development Corporation provides easy credit that together greatly facilitates the global expansion of Canadian mining.

Toronto is the mining finance capital of the world, raising 30 to 40 per cent of the world’s mining equity most every year, and Canadian mining companies account for a world-leading 40 percent of global exploration expenditure. As of a few years ago, companies listed on Canadian stock exchanges held interests in over 3000 mineral properties in Canada, 1400 in Latin America, close to a thousand in Africa and about 500 in each of the USA and Asia, Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Commodities bloodbath ‘nothing to fear,’ mining tycoons say – by Lisa Wright (Toronto Star – May 17, 2011)

May 17, 2011

Lisa Wright is a business reporter with the Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion. This article was originally published May 17, 2011.

The recent slide in metals prices — make that a slaughter in silver — has been pretty hard to stomach for the stampede of investors who have taken a shine to the gritty mining industry lately. But Peter Munk, Ian Telfer and Bob Gallagher aren’t reaching for the Rolaids.

Nor are they the least bit bearish after two rocky weeks that saw silver plummet by 35 per cent, gold dip under the $1,500 U.S. per ounce watermark and a sharp pull back in construction-friendly base metals from aluminum to zinc.

Many investors are squeamish after the gut-wrenching correction which dragged once-soaring silver squarely into bear market territory. (A 20 per cent decline from a market high is the unofficial definition of a bear market.)

In fact ‘poor man’s gold’, as it’s known, suffered its biggest four-day decline in 28 years earlier this month after hitting a peak of $48.70 U.S. in April. Silver slid another $1.85 again Monday, closing at $34.35 in London.

Shooting Gold Diggers at [Barrick Gold] African Mine Seen Amid Record Prices – by Cam Simpson (Bloomberg Markets Magazine – April 2011)

May 13, 2011

Bloomberg Markets magazine brings the inside view of professional investing with unparalleled access to the most influential people in global business and finance.

Security guards and federal police have allegedly shot and killed people scavenging the waste rock at Barrick Gold’s North Mara mine in Tanzania

(Bloomberg) — Barrick Gold Corp.’s North Mara mine near the Tanzanian border with Kenya disgorges millions of pounds of waste rock each week, piled high around communities where almost half the people live on less than 33 cents a day.

Children in school uniforms scurry across the rubble to reach their classes. Women with water pails atop their heads skirt past the heaps. The piles grow as the longest bull market for gold in at least 90 years pushes Barrick, the world’s largest miner of the precious metal, to increase production.

Villagers, too, are hunting the ore on the North Mara land that their ancestors worked for decades, sometimes paying with their lives.

Security guards and federal police allegedly have shot and killed people scavenging the gold-laced rocks to sell for small amounts of cash, according to interviews with 28 people, including victims’ relatives, witnesses, local officials and human-rights workers.

For Barrick, a golden opportunity to expand [into copper] – by Brenda Bouw and David Ebner (Globe and Mail – April 30, 2011)

May 1, 2011May 1, 2011

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media. Brenda Bouw is the Globe’s mining reporter.

“When you are not prepared to look at new things because you are struck in your own
success because the commodity is going up, that is when danger occurs. … Isn’t that what
business is all about, to take advantage of opportunities when they arise? … I am not an
employee. It’s my legacy, it’s my life. I live this company.”
(Peter Munk – Chairman Barrick Gold Corporation)

Peter Munk has heard the howls of protest from Bay Street before.

The founder and chairman of Barrick Gold Corp. was lambasted in 1994 when he paid $1.7-billion (U.S.) for gold miner Lac Minerals to expand outside of North America, and then again in 2006 when he took out rival gold producer Placer Dome for $10-billion, picking up 12 new mines to secure the company’s position as the world’s largest gold producer.

But the cries were particularly shrill this week after Barrick surprised the mining industry with a $7.3-billion (Canadian) bid for Equinox Minerals Ltd., a copper producer with operations in Africa and Saudi Arabia. Even as gold prices hit new highs this week, Barrick shares dropped 9 per cent since the deal was announced Monday.

Investors quickly voiced a number of concerns about the deal, from the rich premium paid, to increased political risk. But their biggest beef centres around the shift in strategy. Barrick, the world’s largest gold producer, is betting a bundle on a different class of metal: copper.

The mining giant’s golden boy [Barrick’s Aaron Regent] – by Lisa Wright

February 23, 2011

Chalk it up to the luck of the Irish but Aaron Regent has already marked a number of golden milestones this year, both personal and professional.

For starters, he just passed the two-year mark as chief executive of the world’s largest bullion producer, Barrick Gold Corp., amid a red-hot gold market.

He also turned 45 last month. And recently it was revealed the Dublin-born, Calgary-bred executive is the top-paid CEO in Canada, raking in $24.2 million in 2009.

True to form, Regent remains low-key about it all. “It’s been a busy two years for us,” he says, with an accent that hints of both old country and new.

NEWS RELEASE – HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: Papua New Guinea: Serious Abuses at Barrick Gold Mine

February 10, 2011

Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world. (Human Rights Watch website)

Systemic Failures Underscore Need for Canadian Government Regulation

February 1, 2011

(Toronto) – Private security personnel employed at a gold mine in Papua New Guinea have been implicated in alleged gang rapes and other violent abuses, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Porgera mine has produced billions of dollars of gold in its twenty years of operation, and is operated and 95 percent owned by Barrick Gold, a Canadian company that is the world’s largest gold producer.

The 94-page report, “Gold’s Costly Dividend: Human Rights Impacts of Papua New Guinea’s Porgera Gold Mine,” identifies systemic failures on the part of Toronto-based Barrick Gold that kept the company from recognizing the risk of abuses, and responding to allegations that abuses had occurred. The report examines the impact of Canada’s failure to regulate the overseas activities of its companies and also calls on Barrick to address environmental and health concerns around the mine with greater transparency.

“We interviewed women who described brutal gang rapes by security guards at Barrick’s mine,” said Chris Albin-Lackey, senior business and human rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The company should have acted long before Human Rights Watch conducted its research and prompted them into action”.

Human Rights Watch said that in response to its investigation, Barrick has taken meaningful steps to investigate past abuses and make it less likely for similar abuses to occur in future.

Most of the world’s mining and exploration companies are based in Canada.

[Peter Munk Donation] Biting the Hand That Feeds Them – Financial Post Editorial

January 24, 2011

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper. This column was originally published in the Financial Post on January 22, 2011.

In 2006, he [Peter Munk] announced a donation of $37-million to Toronto General Hospital, for support of the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre … That was the largest gift ever made to a Canadian medical institution … (Financial Post, January 22, 2011)

Peter Munk is donating $35-million to the University of Toronto. But all left-wing activists see is the evil spectre of ‘corporatization’

Today, the University of Toronto is the site of a major protest event, which will be led by academics flown in from California, and by Toronto Star writer Linda Mc-Quaig. What’s the object of the activists’ ire — Aboriginal rights? Stephen Harper? Israel? The United States? The contested territorial status of the land-locked Central Asian region of Nagorno-Karabakh?

Nope. None of the above. The seven-hour “Anti-Corporatization teach-in” scheduled to take place at U of T’s Sidney Smith Hall will target the decision of an alumnus to give the university $35-million. Oh, the horror.

The alumnus in question is gold magnate Peter Munk, and his donation will go toward funding the U of T’s Munk School for Global Affairs. If the school’s name sounds familiar, it could be because of the global acclaim won by its Citizen Lab, which in 2010 helped uncover a network of 1,294 computers in 103 countries that had been compromised by a virus originating in China. Or it could be because of the work of renowned scholars such as director Janice Stein, who has co-authored the definitive book on Canada’s deployment to Afghanistan.

Barrick Donation Boosts Health Care in Northwestern Ontario

January 20, 2011

This article was provided by the Ontario Mining Association (OMA), an organization that was established in 1920 to represent the mining industry of the province.

Ontario Mining Association member Barrick Gold’s gift of $150,000 to Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) will enhance health care services in Northwestern Ontario. Matching support for some components of this donation by the Ontario Trust for Student Support increases the size of the gift to $235,000.

“This gift is in keeping with our policy and objective of giving back to the community,” said Jamie Sokalsky, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Barrick Gold. “We want to share our success in the communities where we operate.”

Barrick Gold owns and operates Hemlo Mines in Marathon, which includes the Williams Mine and the David Bell Mine. The donation was made earlier this week at a ceremony. The funds will be used for a number of purposes. The bulk of it ($100,000) will be employed to support the NOSM.

[Barrick Founder] Peter Munk: ‘I’ve made some money and I wish to give it back’ – by Richard Blackwell

January 7, 2011

This article was originally published in the Globe and Mail on December 31, 2010. It is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. The paper has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

Nation Builder 2010 Finalist

In 2010 Peter Munk cemented his reputation as one of Canada’s foremost philanthropists with a $35-million donation to the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, enabling a dramatic expansion of the Munk Centre for International Studies that he helped start up a decade ago.

The donation – the largest single gift the U of T has received from an individual – underlines the two prongs of Mr. Munk’s philanthropic vision: Stay focused and support Canada’s role on the world stage.

Mr. Munk, a refugee who built multinational mining giant Barrick Gold Corp. and is still its chairman at the age of 83, believes Canada is one of the world’s great countries, yet it is unappreciated by many who were born here.

“We are a country of peace, law, justice, freedom and free education. We have the largest multiracial society in the world,” he said. “Canada is as good as it gets.”

Mr. Munk has decided to give away most of his fortune rather than leave it to his children. “It is your obligation to give back as much as you have taken from a country,” he said in an interview from his winter home in Switzerland. “I consider myself considerably lucky. … I’ve made some money and I wish to give it back.”

Business News Network Reporter Andrew Bell Interviews Barrick CEO Aaron Regent – (December 14, 2010)

December 29, 2010

Toronto-based Business News Network (BNN) is a Canadian cable television specialty channel owned by CTVglobalmedia. BNN airs business and financial programming and analysis. BNN reporter Andrew Bell hosts the Commodities program. From aluminum to zinc and everything in between, every Tuesday through Thursday, BNN highlights the hot world of commodities and the companies that produce …