BUSINESS MAVERICK OP-ED: Mark Bristow and his Randgold team tick the right boxes to run the biggest gold merger ever

that one the key questions shareholders in these companies might want to ask is this: What makes a good mining executive?

In a way, this is also a discussion of leadership and, having just read General Stanley McChrystal’s book on that vexed subject, I have no wish to delve further into the topic other than to say that a top mining executive needs to have a track record of leading. But more importantly, they need to have teams in their immediate present and past who have readily and enthusiastically followed them for a number of years, through good times and bad.

Mining executives are slightly different from other executives in the sense that the major asset they work with is a wasting one. Once the minerals in the ore body have been mined out, the good Lord does not put them back a second time. So, they are involved in a constant process of recreating their main assets.

It goes without saying that mining is a numbers game and it helps to be numerate but, like many specialist skills, it is not essential to have one or more of them as these can be hired. Although it does help that a top mining executive is trained in one of the key mining skills — mining engineering itself obviously, geology, metallurgy or civil, electrical or mechanical engineering — but again this is not essential as these skills are readily available, certainly in developed countries.

It is critical that a senior mining executive has a good knowledge of finance and a proven track record of being able to raise money from financial institutions and the public via stock market rights offers, stock exchange listings and the like. Among other things, this requires that he have an impeccable reputation for honesty, decency and fairness.

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