Canada's Barrick Gold Considers Switching Primary Stock Listing to NYSE
August 05 2020 - 1:26PM
Dow Jones News
By Alistair MacDonald
Barrick Gold Corp. is weighing moving its main listing from
Toronto to New York, the company's chief executive said, a step
that would weaken the gold giant's traditional links to Canada.
Chief Executive Mark Bristow said the company was debating a
move to the New York Stock Exchange, but that there were no current
plans to do so. He said he frequently debates the merits of a U.S.
primary stock listing.
The NYSE "is an exceptional institution, if you want to be
global and focused upon as a public corporation rather than a niche
player, and that is what we want to be," Mr. Bristow said in an
interview.
"We want to be world class and be global," he said.
Barrick, with headquarters in Toronto, has its main listing on
the Toronto Stock Exchange, with a secondary listing on the
NYSE.
Helped by two years of rising gold price, Barrick Gold has
become one of the world's largest miners, with a market value of
more than $53 billion. Barrick shares are up around 64% this year,
with gold trading at a record high above $2,000 an ounce.
A primary U.S. listing would allow Barrick to be traded on the
S&P 500 and would open it up to large tracker funds that follow
this index.
"As this world grows, public money changes in character... now
there is an enormous amount of index buying," Mr. Bristow said.
Still, he said, "just to pick your tent up and move somewhere is
very expensive."
Toronto remains one of the world's biggest trading centers for
mining, but mainly for small to midsize company listings. Measured
by market cap, Barrick Gold is Canada's largest miner and the
world's second largest gold miner, just behind arch rival Newmont
Corp.
An exchange shift would be a blow to the Toronto Stock Exchange
and Canada, which has in recent decades lost many of its largest
companies, particularly in oil and mining, as they either relist
elsewhere or have become takeover targets.
Barrick Gold was founded in Canada in 1983 by entrepreneur Peter
Munk, who bought a half interest in an Ontario mine. Riding an
earlier boom in the gold price,he gobbled up mines, and by 2006,
Barrick owned 27 world-wide. Mr. Munk died in 2018.
Write to Alistair MacDonald at alistair.macdonald@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 05, 2020 13:11 ET (17:11 GMT)
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