Bill Birchall

"That, to me, was a very great promise. In the middle of this Consgold turmoil, which lasted almost a year, we made several million pounds on the transaction because, as we kept buying, the attendant publicity suddenly focused on Consgold as a takeover target. In fact, the Oppenheimers themselves then subsequently made a bid for more Consgold stock. The move on Consgold promised to give Munk much-needed mines, which “I would get later on by buying Goldstrike, but at that time I needed the next step.” A week after Munk met with Agnew, Bill Birchall received word that Hill Samuel was interested in buying all or any part of Barrick’s 5-percent shareholdings in Consgold. That useful information was of great comfort to Peter Munk, whose Consgold play had driven the market value of Barrick’s 4.9-percent holding up by over $10 million and rising. That would mean a tidy profit on an investment made but a few months earlier."

"During the remainder of 1987, Munk focused on raising capital for American Barrick Resources. He left the mining development to Bob Smith and his professionals. Munk and Gilmour, with their expert number-cruncher partner, Bill Birchall, would orchestrate the money mining."

"Gerry Schwartz and Anthony and those guys look at six deals a week! I hate deals. When I do deals, it upsets me, makes me nervous. I always feel that I’m going to make a mistake. I do them to attain my strategic objectives. It sometimes takes a few deals to get there. But I never do a deal per se. I hate it! It’s a totally different mentality. Yes, I did Lac, but God save me from another Lac. And yet I'll do one next year again— maybe because I have to—for getting Barrick in position. But its a different mindset. Their business is to look at deals, like investment bankers. Gerry’s background was as an investment banker. Anthony had some time at First Boston, the investment bankers. I like people like Bill Birchall and Greg Wilkins and Bob Smith, who have run a business for twenty or thirty years and build permanent entities and value for their shareholders. Different mentality."

"Peter Munk was beginning to focus on something about which he really knew very lit- tle—gold mines. Bill Birchall was on Munk’s wavelength about gold. In 1981 and °82 he had spent time in Australia, where he looked at some gold mines, and he claims that he learned how to do a profit-and-loss of a gold mine on the back of an envelope. Peter Munk’s criteria for gold mines were all related to their potential. He and Birchall considered South Africa, and they looked at gold mining businesses in North America. They found only two sizable publicly quoted gold mining companies, Campbell Red Lake and Homestake Mining. Both had large market capitalizations in the range of a billion dollars and enor- mously high share price—earnings ratios. Munk and Birchall wondered why, if the price of gold was not going crazy, would a gold mining operation have such a high price— earnings ratio? The answer was very simple. There was a scarcity of major gold producers. There was a plethora of gold exploration firms in those days, but an institutional fund manager wouldn't invest in an exploration company, and if he wanted a share in a gold mining com- pany, he had a choice of two: Campbell Red Lake or Homestake."