Deals

Barrick's Leftovers Are Gold

When conditions improve -- and spot gold is up 26 percent this year -- resource quality comes to the fore.
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The world's two biggest gold miners, Newmont and Barrick, tend to be talked about in the same breath. They held merger talks in 1991 and 2000 and wooed each other for several years after 2009, culminating in formal takeover discussions that eventually broke down in 2014.

Tough times have a habit of highlighting the differences between companies, though, and Barrick's decision to sell half of their Australian joint venture shows why its shareholders, with their better-quality asset base, came out best from the collapse of those talks.