This odd couple plots to save $100bn gold mining business
A Goldman Sachs alumnus and a South African geologist and big-game hunter walk into a gold mine (NB: punchline not yet written)
Toronto/London — John Thornton is a Goldman Sachs alumnus educated at Yale, Harvard and Oxford. Mark Bristow is a South African geologist and big-game hunter. Together, this corporate odd couple has a plan to turn around the lagging fortunes of the world’s largest gold-mining company, whose shares are down 67% from their high in 2010. Thornton, executive chairman of Barrick Gold, set the partnership in motion when he announced a deal for smaller rival Randgold Resources for $5.4bn in September. He tapped Bristow, Randgold’s CEO, to be the CEO of the combined companies. Thornton is getting a maverick, but also a CEO whose company’s share price has gained about 5,300% since the end of 1999, making it the best-performing stock in London’s FTSE 100 Index this century. The two senior executives, who declined to be interviewed for this story, need to improve the quality of Barrick’s mine portfolio by wading into some of the world’s riskiest jurisdictions while keeping an iron grip on cost...
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