For the son of a wealthy mining mogul, this was something of an initiation. He spent the summer hunting for gold — shadowing grizzled prospectors and geologists, bushwhacking through the Boréal forest. He even dug holes for where the outhouses would go. “I just wanted to be kept busy,” he said.
Through a family trust managed out of Geneva, Switzerland, the Lundins are also top shareholders in nearly a dozen other commodities companies, including Botswana-based diamond driller Lucara Diamond Corp. and ShaMaran Petroleum Corp., an oil explorer with assets in Iraq.Few in the industry were surprised to see Adam and Jack take over from their father, but it happened sooner than expected, after Lukas died suddenly of brain cancer in 2022.
Adolf H. Lundin was a Swedish wildcatter who made a fortune from the 1976 discovery of a natural gas field off the coast of Qatar. In Europe’s staid commodities world, his swashbuckling business ventures brought him fame and controversy. He invested in gold projects in apartheid-era South Africa and oil drilling in Sudan while the country was ravaged by civil war.
Appetite for adventure runs in the family — Lukas was a four-time motorcycle competitor in the Dakar rally and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro twice. Within months of his death, Jack climbed Mount Everest to pay homage. Earlier this year, he completed a 75-mile, eight-hour cycling race through British Columbia.