From a Hungarian refugee’s audacious finance-first gambit to a geologist’s hard-nosed operational revival, this story traces how Barrick transformed from the world’s most aggressively hedged gold house into a disciplined, Tier One-seeking mining giant — and why that reinvention still hangs on knife‑edge choices. Peter Munk built scale and market savvy with bets like Goldstrike and a lucrative hedging machine that later trapped the company, spawning a costly “lost decade” capped by the fiasco at Pascua‑Lama; Mark Bristow’s Randgold takeover flipped the script, making operations, community partnerships, and mega-deals like Nevada Gold Mines and a copper push at Reko Diq the new priorities. Yet jurisdictional shocks in Mali, the massive execution risk of Reko Diq, and Bristow’s sudden exit in 2025 leave Barrick’s future — and the fate of a proposed North American “NewCo” spinout — intriguingly unresolved. If you want the full sweep of triumphs, disasters, strategic pivots, and the high-stakes choices that will decide whether Barrick truly finds and keeps “Tier One,” this one's a must.

Transcript https://empor.top/us/B

• I. Introduction: The Paradox of Gold
• II. The Origins: Peter Munk and The Anti-Miner
• III. The Golden Age of Hedging
• IV. The Lost Decade: Hubris and Value Destruction
• V. The African Lion: Mark Bristow and Randgold
• VI. The Deal of the Century
• VII. The Modern Playbook: Copper, Reko Diq, and Sustainability
• VIII. Playbook: Lessons for Builders and Investors
• IX. Analysis: Powers and Forces
• X. The Bull and Bear Cases
• Conclusion: The Search for Tier One Continues