Bristow Hunts for Mine Purchases as Gold Slump Augurs Fire Sales

Mark Bristow, who built Randgold
Resources Ltd. (RRS) by making discoveries across Africa, is turning
to acquisitions as a slump in the bullion price forces rivals to
consider selling mines.

Gold fell to a four-year low of $1,137.94 an ounce
yesterday, below the production costs of seven out of 19
companies tracked by Bloomberg Intelligence, including Harmony
Gold Mining Co. (HAR), South Africa's third-largest producer, and
Primero Mining Corp. (P)

Bristow, chief executive officer of Randgold, sees the
chance to buy mines in Africa that would have once been beyond
the Jersey-based company's reach as peers struggle with debt and
falling profits. AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (AU), the world's third-biggest producer, said this week it was putting mines up for
sale to cut debt.

"Everyone would like to sell assets that they don't
want," Bristow said today in an interview in London. "We want
assets they don't want to sell. It's going to come as a surprise
to the market as people realize they have to do it. There's
going to be a tipping point."

Bristow said buying a mine, rather than a company, is
Randgold's preferred option.

"Driven by circumstances I believe there are going to be
some opportunities," he said.

Trashed Opportunity

Under Bristow, a geologist by training, Randgold has
generally shied away from doing deals. The gold producer built
its business by finding its own mines, making discoveries in
Mali, Senegal and Ivory Coast. The exception was the 2009
acquisition of Moto Goldmines Ltd. with AngloGold.

As gold prices fell 4.7 percent last week, the Standard &
Poor's/TSX Global Gold Sector Index of 40 producers plunged 16
percent.

Randgold is the best-performing stock in the index in the
past 10 years, rising more than fivefold in the period. The
shares rose 1.2 percent to 3,811 pence as of 12:47 a.m. in
London.

Bristow said many of the gold-mining industry's problems
are self-inflicted as companies racked up debt, chased low-quality assets and over supplied the market during the precious
metal's 12-year bull run.

"A lot of this is deserved," Bristow said. "We trashed
the opportunity of a rising gold price, 10 years of a rising
gold price. We're doing the same again as it comes down. There's
a whole pile wrong."

Ebola Neglect

Bristow was also scathing about the developed world's
response to the Ebola in West Africa. He said the affected
countries were neglected in the early months of the outbreak and
much of the subsequent response has been "hysterical."

"This foolish behavior by so-called first-world countries
and their leadership is damaging," he said. "What it does do
is bring into question the real commitment that the developed
world has to bringing along the rest of the world."

The Ebola outbreak has killed more than 5,000 people,
mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to the
World Health Organization. Randgold has mines in Mali, where
there has been one confirmed case of Ebola, and Ivory Coast,
which borders Liberia and Guinea.

"People play lip service to investment, upliftment and
equality, and it all pales into nothing when you see how people
behave in a situation like this," Bristow said. "You can
manage Ebola. It's not an unmanageable disease."

Randgold today reported a 29 percent decline in third-quarter profit to $58 million, even as sales increased 8 percent
to $376.8 million. The company mined 299,320 ounces of gold in
the quarter at an average cost of $692 per ounce.

The company maintained its full-year production target of
1.13 million ounces to 1.2 million ounces.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Thomas Biesheuvel in London at
tbiesheuvel@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Will Kennedy at
wkennedy3@bloomberg.net
Dylan Griffiths, Ana Monteiro

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