Barrick and Randgold Merge to Become World’s Number One Gold

South African Randgold finally merged with Canada’s Barrick Gold. The transaction, which represents $ 18.3 billion, excluding debt, gives birth to the world’s number one gold in terms of market capitalization.

Before the merger, Randgold had a capitalization of 4.6 billion pounds (5.12 billion euros) while Barrick Gold was worth 18.78 billion Canadian dollars (12.4 billion euros), according to Thomson Reuters.

Including the debt, the enterprise value of the new entity is $ 24.1 billion. Shortly before the merger, Randgold announced a record dividend of $ 2.69 per share, up from $ 2.00 originally announced, for a total of $ 65 million distributed to shareholders.

Repercussions in Africa

Randgold is active in Africa, where he owns two mines in Loulou-Gounkoto in Mali and Kibali in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As a result of this transaction, mining officials held press conferences in key countries, including Côte d’Ivoire and Mali.

For example, Dr. Dennis Mark Bristow, former CEO of Rangold, promoted to head Barrick Gold after the operation, is adamant: the future of the company will be played in Africa. “We are going to sell our assets in Australia and Asia-Pacific to focus on Africa and America,” he said during his visit to Abidjan.

  Mark Bristow also believes that the operation Randgold -Barrick is not a buyout of one company by the other, nor an absorption but “a pooling of shares”.

For his part, Mamadou Samaké, West Africa Director of Randgold, reassured the Malian staff: “This change will have no impact on Randgold jobs that will be preserved or even consolidated.” The merger takes place, let us recall, after the company Randgold has obtained from the Malian authorities a tax reduction of 50% over the next four years.

 With a 6% contribution to Mali’s GDP, Randgold should increase its contribution following the forthcoming opening of the Loulo-Gounkoto mining complex.

As a reminder, Mali is the third largest gold producer in the continent, behind South Africa and Ghana. The Randgold Group is present in Mali, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo.