SUSTAINABILITY: LAGGING ESG PERFORMACE IS HURTING MINERS, REPORT SAYS / 3 Geotech_Earlug_2016_Alt2.pdf 1 2016-06-24 4:27:20 PM
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Maverix proves skeptics wrong PROFILE
| Royalty and streaming company in ‘unique spot’
BY TRISH SAYWELL tsaywell@northernminer.com
I Tailings from the Feijao iron ore mine shortly after its tailings dam collapsed in January 2019. FELIPE WERNECK/IBAMA
Ex-Vale CEO charged with homicide for Brazil dam disaster MINAS GERAIS |
Expert panel says mine tailings were ‘under very high loading’
“IT IS PREMATURE TO CLAIM THERE WAS CONSCIOUS ASSUMPTION OF RISK TO CAUSE A DELIBERATE BREACH OF THE DAM.”
BY TRISH SAYWELL
S
tsaywell@northernminer.com
tate prosecutors in Brazil have charged Vale’s (NYSE: VALE) former CEO, Fabio Schvartsman, with homicide after the catastrophic tailings dam disaster a year ago at the company’s Feijao iron ore mine in Minas Gerais killed more than 250 people. Schvartsman left his position at the company in March 2019. Homicide charges also have been levelled against 15 other people, according to a charging sheet seen by Reuters, while state prosecutors have charged Vale and its German contractor TUV SUD with environmental crimes. Vale did not return a request from The Northern Miner for clarification on the charges, but in a statement on its website said it “believes the accusations of fraud are perplexing” and that “it is important to note that other authorities are investigating the case, and, at this point, it is premature to claim there was conscious assumption of risk to cause a deliberate breach of the dam. “Vale trusts in the complete clarification of the causes of the breach
Fabio Schvartsman, former Vale president and CEO, speaks in London, U.K., in 2017. VALE
STATEMENT
and reaffirms its commitment to continue to fully cooperate with the authorities,” it said. In mid-December, the mining giant released a long-awaited report from a panel of experts on the technical causes of the dam failure at the mine in Brumadinho. The report found that the failure was “unique in that it occurred with no apparent signs of distress prior to failure.” The report also stated that “analyses of the stress state within the dam showed that parts of the dam were under very high loading due to the steepness of the dam, the heavy weight of the tailings and the high internal water level. The
combination of a steep upstreamconstructed dam, high water level, weak fine tailings within the dam, and the brittle nature of the tailings created the conditions for failure.” The tailings dam failure on Jan. 25 killed 257 people and left 13 others missing for an assumed death toll of 270. “The report does not attribute blame but looks at what occurred,” Edward Sterck of BMO Capital Markets said in a research note to clients on Dec. 12, 2019. “The key conclusion is that the dam design, a lack of internal drainage and poor tailings deposition management
VALE
See VALE / 2
n the three and a half years since Geoff Burns cofounded Maverix Metals (TSX: MMX; NYSE-AM: MMX) with CEO Daniel O’Flaherty in July 2016, the royalty and streaming company’s portfolio has grown to more than 100 assets — 14 of them paying. In 2018, Maverix posted $3.5 million in net income on record revenues of $34 million from 20,886 attributable equivalent oz. gold sold, and is on track to meet its 2019 guidance of between 22,500 and 24,500 attributable equivalent oz. gold sold. Its largest shareholders are Newmont (TSX: NGT; NYSE: NEM), Pan American Silver (TSX: PAAS; NASDAQ: PAAS) and Kinross Gold (TSX: K; NYSE: KGC), which own 25.1%, 23.1% and 9.4% of the company (undiluted). Burns was president and CEO of Pan American Silver from May 2004 until December 2015. After more than a decade at the company, he decided it was time to step down and let someone else take the reins for the next leg of growth. While the company was introducing Michael Steinmann as his successor, Burns happened to be reviewing Pan American Silver’s annual information form and realized that buried in the Pan American portfolio was a series of royalties for which the company was getting zero market recognition and no value. So he went to the board and asked whether they thought it would be worthwhile to pull the royalties into a separate vehicle and allow him to bring them to market. Company chairman Ross Beaty, a hugely successful entrepreneur and renowned mining operator and investor, thought about it for about a minute, Burns recalls, and said he thought it was an excellent idea. It took six to eight months to organize the portfolio, find a shell company to use for an RTO transaction, and identify candidates to participate on the board and management team. Pan American initially held a 60% stake in the company and Maverix completed a private placement before its launch
“THE FEEDBACK WAS: ‘WHO REALLY NEEDS ANOTHER ROYALTY COMPANY?’” GEOFF BURNS COFOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, MAVERIX METALS
on the TSX Venture Exchange, which provided it with a modest $6-million treasury. Right out of the gates, two of the 13 royalty streams Maverix acquired from Pan American were cash flowing — contributing the modest sum of 1,500 equivalent oz. gold a year — enough to keep the lights on and the company going. The first was a gold stream on the La Colorada mine, one of Pan American’s cornerstone assets (Maverix received a life-of-mine stream for 100% of the by-product gold production See MAVERIX / 14 PM40069240
ANGLO AMERICAN: MOVES BACK INTO FERTILIZERS / 5
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