The Happyclown of
The Month

Our Leaders are
Leading the Way

February's Happyclown,
Peter Munk
Chief Executive of Barrick Gold Corp.

Peter, 69, began his illustrious career as the owner of one of the world's largest gold producers by selling Christmas trees as a young lad after escaping war-torn Hungary. He quickly climbed the philanthropic ladder because of his ability to install expensive, high-fidelity MacIntosh stereo equipment in affluent Forest Hill homes, although the speakers that his company, Claritone Sound Corp., sold were cheap, Nordic cardboard jobs. After all, the idea was to somehow get inside the homes of Canada's rich and powerful to get to know em -- they wouldn't be too concerned about how their stereos sounded as long as they were very, very expensive.

It was an easy career leap for Peter to at one point try to convince former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to build a $400-million resort behind the Pyramids and fulfill his life-long dream of developing a theme park. Just imagine the sound system.

Anyhow, the job was much easier with the help of Peter's good buddy Adnan Kashoggi, who later gained international notoriety as a high-rolling arms dealer in the Iran-Contra affair. From this point, there was no turning back for this great man with the golden touch. By 1983, Peter was buying gold mine after gold mine, quickly making Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp. the second-largest gold producer in the world with its US$1.3 billion Goldstrike Project in Nevada. Barrick quickly became a major Canadian blue-chip player outstaged only by South Africa's Anglo American, which had fallen out of favour in the international scene because of its highly questionable Apartheid regime.

Of course, it helps a bit when you have former U.S. President George Bush on Barrick's advisory committee, as well as everyone's favourite former Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney (a high-flyer in his own right), as chairman of Barrick's board of directors.

That help nearly came in useful when Barrick tried to strike a February 15 deal with the Indonesian government (known for keeping corruption at a minimum) for a stake in what is still believed to be the world's richest gold deposit in the remote jungles of Busang -- much to the chagrin of home-grown, Calgary mining junior Bre-X Minerals Ltd., which actually discovered the gold but is a bit green behind the ears when it comes to dealing with powerful world leaders.

It seems that Bush and Mulroney were tight with Indonesian President Suharto's influential daughter, Siti Hardyanti Rukmana, who played a slick role in what could have given Barrick a 67.5% of Bre-X's stake in Busang's 51 million ounces of gold, leaving newcomer Bre-X with 22.5%, and a sweet 10% cut for the Indonesian government. Barrick tried to enter the deal through the back door by saying: "Hey, we'll develop the mine. We'll also become the world's biggest gold company. Cool."

But the whole thing fell through, to Peter's chagrin.

Peter, well-known in the elbow-rubbing circles of Canadian business journalism as a golden sugar daddy with the young ladies, must be disappointed by his spurned alliance with Rukmana. As far as he's concerned, she's worth twice her weight in gold -- if not more. After all, he has a modest reputation to uphold as the man with the Midas touch.