[Goldcorp’s] Ian Telfer: ‘I’m more of an opportunist than a visionary’ – by Andy Hoffman (Globe and Mail – May 28, 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.

Ian Telfer was a screw-up. The Canadian mining industry luminary didn’t exactly excel during his undergraduate days in university. He was too busy having fun.

So at 25, after doing some travelling and bouncing around at entry-level jobs for a few years, he was exceedingly grateful to have been accepted (at the absolute last moment with two days until classes) to the University of Ottawa’s MBA program.

“I was not cum laude,” he smirks with a creviced grin. So appreciative was Mr. Telfer, in fact, that he has since created a scholarship awarded annually to the program entrant with the lowest university marks.

Despite a playful and self-deprecating sense of humour, the unusual academic endowment isn’t just a lark. It tells you all you need to know about the 65-year-old’s sense of self and his perceived place among Canada’s corporate elite.

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Battered [Sudbury] nickel regaining lustre – by Lisa Wright (Toronto Star – May 28, 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 28, 2011.

Two little Sudbury-area miners reopen amid a resource rebound

If Bill Anderson had a nickel for every time someone asked him why he’s not in the gold mining business, he could open a nickel mine. After all, gold is synonymous with glamour and wealth while nickel, at least for Canadians, is synonymous with, well…Sudbury. Jokes aside, the lifelong geologist took all those cocktail party digs and opened a little nickel mine.

First Nickel Inc., which CEO Anderson co-founded, scooped up the old Lockerby mine in the Sudbury basin from former Canadian mining giant Falconbridge (now Xstrata Plc) in 2005.

And it seemed like the good times would never end as nickel prices soared to what Anderson calls “silly” levels of nearly $25 U.S. a pound, prompting foreign mining conglomerates Xstrata of Switzerland and Brazil’s Vale to take over historic Sudbury foes Falconbridge and Inco respectively for top dollar at what turned out to be the height of the market.

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