Last of the Randlords bow out

CEO turnover is increasing in the world’s mining sector. It rose to 15.1% in 2023 from 14% a year earlier, according to a report by Canada’s Bedford Group. Despite this data, the gold sector was sent reeling earlier this month when the industry’s No 1 and No 3 miners announced they were replacing their bosses. Not even the record gold price can guarantee C-suite longevity.

Newmont Group’s incumbent is South African metallurgist Natascha Viljoen, formerly of Anglo Platinum. She replaces Aussie Tom Palmer in a development that surprised because it came a mere four hours after Barrick Mining announced its CEO Mark Bristow had resigned.

Bristow’s demise was clearly a shock as Barrick had no replacement lined up and Bristow had declared he wasn’t stepping aside until 2027. “Bullshit,” he told Miningmx last year when asked to comment on rumours by Toronto’s Globe & Mail that he was nearing the exit.

Admittedly, the last to expect the dagger is Caesar, but in Bristow’s case surprise is the predominant feeling, if only because he was endorsed by Barrick chair John Thornton. Asked last year why he’d become a nonexecutive, Thornton replied: “Who needs to be an executive ... when Bristow is the CEO?”

In any event, Bristow bows out. As is predictable with giant personalities, it is with brickbats and laurels. The Globe & Mail called him a braggart. Canadians are probably sick to the back teeth of South Africans. Takeovers for Vancouver’s beloved Teck Resources have twice been attempted by South African CEOs in recent years: first by Glencore’s and now by that of Anglo American, with the latter bid likely to be a success, analysts (and share prices) say.

The other side of Bristow, yet to receive due recognition, is the significant impact he has made on world mining. Regardless of personal taste, Bristow was a juggernaut. UK investors were aggrieved at the departure of his Randgold Resources, the LSE’s premium gold stock, when it merged with Barrick in 2019, so significant had the mining firm become in the City. Randgold Resources was a phenomenon, growing from a single asset mine in Mali to a 1-million ounce a year producer over more than 20 years, an achievement in its own right.

What’s clear is that Bristow’s resignation brings the curtain down on a generation of South African mining ability. A day after his departure on September 29, Neal Froneman left the building at Sibanye-Stillwater, the company he founded 12 years ago. Whereas Bristow was a builder of mines, following the route of patient resource development as you’d expect of a geologist, Froneman was a quick-fire, sometimes mercurial, executive who favoured mergers & acquisitions.

Criticised occasionally for empire-building — he fought off comments that he was the Pac-Man of the industry — Froneman created extraordinary value for investors at Uranium One, propelling it to one of the four largest producers of the mineral before forming Gold One, which then became Sibanye (and later Sibanye-Stillwater, the largest producer of platinum group metals for a while). “Clever, ruthless and lucky,” is how one mining executive described Froneman in 2015.

Both Froneman and Bristow were products of Randgold & Exploration. Incorporated in 1992, Randgold had taken over the interests of Rand Mines, South Africa’s oldest mining company, to dispense with expensive head office fees and frills in favour of devolved, leaner subsidiaries Harmony Gold and Durban Roodepoort Deep (now DRDGold).

Bernard Swanepoel was another Randgold & Exploration executive. As founding CEO of Harmony Gold, he transformed the company, much as Bristow had done at Randgold Resources, establishing a 1-million ounce plus gold miner.

Like Froneman, Swanepoel — a mining engineer — bought mines and set about them with entrepreneurial rigour. Mining became smarter, with a view to margin and perhaps a consciousness that the bounty of the Witwatersrand Basin, the geological marvel that had sustained gold mining for a century, wouldn’t last forever. Swanepoel employed Froneman; he also employed another standout CEO in Jan Nelson, who led Pan African Resources and Copper 360.

Swanepoel and Bristow shared the Randgold & Exploration boardroom with the late Brett Kebble, Randgold’s commercial director and his father, the late Roger Kebble, who was CEO of DRD. Colourful.

One characteristic Bristow and Froneman shared, for all their apparent differences, was an ability to be blunt even if discretion might serve their purposes better. Froneman didn’t mince his words when it came to South Africa, which he believes is on “a knife edge”. As for Bristow, his lack of compromise was plain for all to see only a year ago. Asked if he and Thornton agreed on M&A, Bristow replied they were “100% on the same page ... And that page is my page”.

Bristow’s resignation brings the curtain down on a generation of South African mining ability