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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.
Shareholders have tried to talk to Barrick’s key people. They have written letters. They have sent a very public message about Barrick’s compensation plan, defeating the company this year in a symbolic say-on-pay vote.
Yet details from Barrick on plans to revamp the board remain elusive. The company’s latest message is that by year-end, shareholders will hear a plan to rejuvenate the board with departures of directors and additions of independent board members. There is no specific word on Mr. Munk, Barrick’s co-chairman. (The Globe’s attempts to reach him Sunday were unsuccessful.)
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