The great economic squeeze are brought by the interference of Corporate special interest
monopoly and control. The opportunity for small business is the key to reviving economic
growth and stabilizes Government capacity regulation to offer efficient and balanced public
service delivery.
This is the way to go people...................
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com/
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com/
Barrick Gold's Stock Crushed As Miner Keeps Punishing Shareholders
Investors who bet on the world's biggest gold miner after its stock got decimated in the first half of 2013 have been given the kind of treatment that shareholders of Barrick Gold ABX -6.81% have gotten accustomed to receiving. Barrick has announced that it is going to dilute shareholders in a big way by selling $3.45 billion of shares for $18.35 each.Shares of Barrick Gold got crushed in Friday morning trading, tumbling by about 6% to $18.22. The stock drop is coming on the heels of a 5% drop on Thursday, when Barrick announced it would suspend its Pascua-Lama mega gold mine located in the high-altitude Andes on the Argentina-Chile border. Shares of Barrick Gold are now down 48% in 2013.
With one of the biggest share offerings in gold mining history, Barrick is trying to raise enough cash to pay down some $2.6 billion of its $15 billion or so in debt that it has accumulated through reckless spending and acquisitions during the huge run up in the price of gold. While suspending work at Pascua-Lama and dealing with its debt-load might seem like a good idea, shareholders probably remember that the last time Barrick pulled off a big share offering in 2009, it raised about $4 billion by selling shares for $36.95.
Barrick has become the poster child for the gold mining sector, which has punished shareholders more than just about any other industry sector in recent years. These companies have managed to underperform gold both when it rises and when it falls—giving investors little upside in the best of environments and handing them massive losses on the way down. Gold miners have spent $45 billion on projects and acquisitions since 2010, but gold output has actually declined. Much of Barrick's troubles can be traced to its spending on Pascua-Lama and its acquisition of Equinox Minerals.
With the price of gold having fallen in the last year, the economics of many projects in the gold mining sector like Pascua-Lama don't really work. The costs associated with moving forward in Pascua-Lama were soaring while the price of the commodity was declining. Another way shareholders have been abused: the executives of many gold miners have been paid well even as their companies destroyed shareholder value. At Barrick, former CEO Aaron Regent was paid $12 million, mostly from a severance package after he was fired. The man who was hired to potentially replace Peter Munk at the top of Barrick, former president of Goldman Sachs John Thornton, got an $11.9 million signing bonus.
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