TAKING THE MONKEY OFF VENKAT'S BACK

Gold-mining company Randgold Resources, which has spent two decades honing its discovery and development philosophy, is now leaping into the unknown by undertaking to fix a mine that has huge amounts of historical baggage going back as far as 1897. For AngloGold, the 118-year-old Obuasi gold mine in Ghana is clearly such a heavy a burden that it is prepared to give half of it away to another company that is able to fix it once and for all. In the words of AngloGold CEO Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan (Venkat), receiving a return on half of an enhanced upside and minimised downside is far better than suffering no return as the owner of 100% of the asset. Randgold CEO Mark Bristow, who is planning to elevate skills at the idled Obuasi mine to match its transitioning into a modern, mechanised stalwart, told Mining Weekly at last month’s rapprochement announcement: “Once we show the benefit we bring, at that point we’ll be taking the monkey off Venkat’s back.”