Gold and Silver

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.

Peter Munk, a Hungarian refugee whose ambitions led him to build hotels in the South Pacific and create stereos for Frank Sinatra, said goodbye to Barrick Gold Corp., the company he founded three decades ago and turned into the world’s biggest gold producer.

The 86-year-old Canadian businessman stepped down as the company’s chairman on Wednesday, a bittersweet moment for Mr. Munk, who has described Barrick as his life and the one thing that keeps him up at night.

“You can take, maybe, Munk out of Barrick. You can’t take Barrick out of Munk,” he said at the company’s annual meeting of shareholders in Toronto.

Mr. Munk knew nothing about gold mining when he took a stake in a small mine near Wawa, Ont., in 1983. He spent the next 30 years buying out rivals and building Barrick into a gold giant.

He has been succeeded by former Goldman Sachs executive John Thornton, who he says shares his vision of transforming Barrick into a Canadian-based mining titan with production in all types of metals.

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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 founder and chairman praises management team and new board chair amid tough times in the gold industry in emotional farewell at annual meeting.

Gone, but definitely not forgotten. That was the tone of Barrick Gold Corp.’s annual meeting in Toronto Wednesday, which marked the emotional farewell of outgoing chairman and founder Peter Munk, and the release of dismal first quarter financial results amid the lacklustre gold price.

The auditorium was filled with the requisite Bay St. suits and shareholders while the annual group of environmental protesters outside hoisted a 15-foot Munk puppet and waved signs like “Gold is a toxic asset” to mark the 86-year-old’s departure.

But it was really Munk’s show, in which he made a farewell speech that drew laughs, hugs, kisses and a standing ovation for his 30 years at the helm of the firm that began as a penny stock with one mine in Northern Ontario to the world’s largest gold miner.

“As much as we’d like to believe we are eternal, the reality hits home,” he said. “The time has come to hand it over.”

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

It wouldn’t be in Peter Munk’s nature to go out quietly. But no one expected this.

As Mr. Munk, 86, officially retires at Barrick Gold Corp.’s annual meeting on Wednesday, he does so in the midst of an appalling public feud between Barrick and Newmont Mining Corp., which went from eager merger partners to mortal enemies in a matter of days. It will take years to rebuild the bridges between these companies, if indeed that ever happens.

Mr. Munk was not closely involved in the Newmont negotiations — he left that to his hand-picked successor John Thornton. But he still found a way to stick himself in the middle of the dispute. In a detailed interview with the Financial Post last week, just as talks were collapsing, he ripped Newmont’s corporate culture and said the company is “not shareholder friendly.” Newmont was not amused.

Remarkably, that was one of the less incendiary things Mr. Munk said about his U.S. rival over a lengthy conversation that touched on many aspects of his career. He has always spoken his mind and never worried too much about what people think of it. But as his time in Canadian business comes to a close, he was even more candid, thought-provoking and entertaining than usual.

For example, if Newmont didn’t like the “not shareholder friendly” line, it certainly won’t appreciate his description of how Barrick found its flagship gold mine and became the dominant player in Nevada:

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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. co-chairman John Thornton has laid out a vision for creating a diversified miner – a vision that is going to be more difficult to realize after a nasty end to talks in his first major transaction.

Mr. Thornton has stated he wants Barrick to be a leader “in a range of minerals.” To do that, he is going to have to be a buyer, adding companies that produce other metals to complement Barrick’s output of gold and copper. So it’s all the more problematic that would-be merger partner Newmont Mining Corp. singled out Mr. Thornton as a particular obstacle to getting a deal done. Even if it’s not true (and it’s hard to know what is fact in any such situation), the statement is out there now and will be attached to Mr. Thornton’s name.

Negotiations break down all the time, between all types of companies. But rarely do supposedly secret talks spill into the public sphere quite so comprehensively as they have in the past week, as seemingly every detail of the talks between Barrick and Newmont landed in the press. Since the first reports that merger talks between the two had hit a snag, the premium, the timing, the consideration, the executive structure and other key terms all made their way to the press even though neither side ever publicly confirmed the negotiations.

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http://www.macleans.ca/

As the notorious magnate leaves Barrick Gold, Peter C. Newman contemplates his rise, fall, and what’s next

With Peter Munk about to abandon his chairmanship of the Barrick mining empire at next week’s annual meeting in Toronto, it seems only appropriate to dwell on his fall from grace. From being the invincible king of international gold mining, the pride of Canada’s business tycoonery, the talented Mr. Munk finds himself accused of having moved too far, too fast, at too high a cost—¬leaving his company stuck with a tricky salvage operation.

But that is not the guts of the story, not the sum total of this remarkable mega-entrepreneur’s long journey from his aristocratic Hungarian background to at least three excursions into commercial glory. That sequence of initiatives climaxed in his successful run as the world’s champion gold magnate, who until the past three years could do no wrong. The dramatic reversal of his standing on Bay Street brought into play British explorer George Leigh Mallory’s 1924 comment about Mount Everest. When asked why he risked his life climbing the mountain, he famously replied: “Because it’s there.” Sixty-four years later, on Sept. 29, 1988, when Stacy Allison became the first American woman to conquer the great peak, was asked the same question, she smiled and shot back: “Cause I’m here!”

That’s the essence of Peter Munk, explained in three words: ¬the optimistic, fast-action guy, convinced that everything he touched would turn to gold. For most of the past five decades that was pretty well what happened. His company was flying high and he dominated its annual shareholders’ meetings, rhetorically armed to meet any challenge. It was at these public performances that he shifted into high gear, using messianic hand gestures and commanding body language. Inevitably, he won over his audiences.

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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. said on Monday that Newmont Mining Corp. has decided to end their merger talks, a development that could lead Barrick to launch a hostile bid for its American rival.

The Toronto-based Barrick had been trying to renew talks with Colorado-headquartered Newmont last week, a source had said. But Newmont’s board of directors decided to “terminate” their discussions, Barrick said.

“Although Barrick believes the interests of shareholders are best served through the completion of this business combination, Newmont’s board has determined that the interests of Newmont’s shareholders are best served by remaining independent,” Barrick said in a statement. Newmont had no immediate comment.

The companies, the world’s two largest gold producers, have discussed merging at least two other times over the last two decades.

The rout in the gold industry led to their recent discussions, with the miners identifying about $1-billion in cost savings.

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