ABX Barrick Gold Corporation

By Alistair MacDonald and James R. Hagerty 

Peter Munk escaped Nazi-occupied Hungary to become a freewheeling international entrepreneur and founder of Barrick Gold Corp.

Aside from building Barrick through takeovers into the world's largest gold miner, he helped create a maker of stylish stereo equipment, made abortive efforts to enter the auto-manufacturing business, developed hotels in the South Pacific and built a marina for giant yachts in Montenegro.

Mr. Munk died Wednesday in Toronto, Barrick said. He was 90.

He was born in Budapest Nov. 8, 1927, into an affluent Jewish family whose fortune derived from real estate and distribution of Viennese chocolates.

In 1944, when the Nazis invaded Hungary, he escaped to Switzerland on a train that would prove one of the last routes out of the country for Jews. His mother, who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, wrote him after the camp was liberated and told him he shouldn't stay in Europe but go instead to North America. "Get a decent, nice job and earn a lot of money," she wrote.

Mr. Munk arrived in Canada with a single suitcase and supported himself as a student in Toronto partly by selling Christmas trees. He was struck by Canadians' hospitality. "In Canada, in my friends' kitchens, the fridges were always open," he once told a reporter. "In Switzerland, you had to know someone a decade before you got invited to their home."

He earned a degree in electrical engineering at the University of Toronto and met fellow student David Gilmour. In 1958, they founded Clairtone Sound Corp., which put high-end turntables and stereo speakers into sleek, Scandinavian-style cabinets.

The company established the founders as dashing young entrepreneurs but was chronically short of cash. Seeking greater scale, they diversified into making television sets and persuaded the province of Nova Scotia to finance a new factory in the town of Stellarton.

The business floundered, partly because of the factory's remote location and lack of a workforce skilled in manufacturing. The provincial government took over the business in 1968 and it closed down several years later.

Mr. Munk's guiding principle was that the "only thing in life that is constant is change," and that helped him adapt and move into new businesses, Mr. Gilmour said in a 2012 interview. Grateful to have been welcomed into Canada as a young man, he also was determined to succeed in his adopted country.

Mr. Munk tried unsuccessfully to enter the automotive industry, first with a plan to assemble Japanese cars in Canada and then with an abortive effort to buy the dying maker of Studebaker cars.

He and Mr. Gilmour rebounded to create South Pacific Properties Ltd., which opened hotels in Fiji, Tahiti, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. After Egyptian President Anwar Sadat halted South Pacific Properties' attempt to build a resort near the pyramids outside Cairo, Mr. Munk sold the company in 1981.

In 1983, Messrs. Munk and Gilmour teamed up again, this time betting that gold prices -- long in the doldrums -- were ready to rebound. They formed Barrick, listed its shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange and bought a half interest in an Ontario mine. Riding a boom in the price of gold, the company quickly gobbled up mines. By 2006, Barrick owned 27 mines world-wide.

In 2011, Barrick paid $7.65 billion for copper miner Equinox Minerals Ltd. just as copper prices started to slide. A sharp decline in gold prices hit profits, and the company was plagued by cost overruns as it tried to extract gold and silver from beneath glacial ice at the Pascua-Lama project in the Andes on the border of Argentina and Chile. Those setbacks hammered Barrick's share price and turned some investors against Mr. Munk.

He clung to his role as chairman as the company sold assets and slimmed down. But gold prices continued to fall and in 2014 he stepped down from Barrick's board at age 86.

In mining, the fedora-wearing Mr. Munk stood out as a flamboyant and energetic entrepreneur. He skied into his 80s and had a home in the Swiss ski village of Klosters.

One of his last projects was leading a group of investors who built the Porto Montenegro marina on the site of a former Yugoslavian naval base on the Adriatic Sea. In 2016, he announced the sale of the marina to the Investment Corp. of Dubai.

Mr. Munk is survived by his wife of 45 years, Melanie Bosanquet. His first marriage, to Linda Gutterson, a professor of English literature, ended in divorce. She died in 2013. He also is survived by five children and 14 grandchildren.

He made large donations to the Toronto General & Western Hospital, the University of Toronto and Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology. He also provided funding for the Toronto-based Aurea Foundation, which encourages discussion about public policy.

A bronze bust of Mr. Munk gazes imperiously on the reception hall in Barrick's Toronto headquarters. On its base are the words: "Peter Munk, founder, builder, visionary."

Write to Alistair MacDonald at alistair.macdonald@wsj.com and James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 28, 2018 17:26 ET (21:26 GMT)

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