Mission: To build successful mining companies
Assets: An innate ability to promote mining stories
Yield: Involvement in more than $4 billion worth of corporate transactions
By Joel McKay
When Catherine McLeod-Seltzer’s grandfather arrived in Stewart, B.C., in the 1920s, he had no idea it would stir a passion that would dominate the next two generations of his family.
But Stewart was a mining town, and it wasn’t long before he was drawn into the gold-frenzied world of prospecting.
He opened a hotel and bar, but before long he staked his own claims.
His son, Don McLeod, tended prospectors’ packhorses as a young man and later become one of B.C.’s most successful diggers.
Don would create two miners of his own: Bruce and Catherine, and ever since the McLeod family has been synonymous with mining in Vancouver.
“I grew up around rocks and stocks that’s what we talked about around the table,” McLeod-Seltzer told Business in Vancouver during a recent interview at her Howe Street office.
And she loves to talk about rocks.
In fact, the wildly successful 50-year-old would say her greatest talent is an ability to “translate” geologic jargon into a story even the most discerning investors buy into.
That’s how she scored big with Arequipa Resources Ltd. in the early 1990s.
This is how the story goes.
After a few years as a struggling stockbroker working for mining mogul Frank Giustra, McLeod-Seltzer partnered with legendary mineral explorer David Lowell to scour the Peruvian jungles for mineral wealth.
It was agreed that he would do the drilling, and she would raise the money with investors in Vancouver.
They banked on Lowell’s earlier discoveries, which had become the stuff of mining legend, to pitch the Arequipa story to Canaccord Financial Inc. (TSX:CF) founder Peter Brown.
“I said to David, ‘Don’t talk. Let them do the talking,’” McLeod-Seltzer recalled. “Finally, Peter said, ‘Tell me about your story.’
“I said, ‘It’s very simple Peter. If you had backed this man 10 years ago in Chile you would have had Escondida, Zaldivar and San Cristobal … the same mineral belts extend into Peru, and this man has been there quietly acquiring land,’ and then I stopped.”
The duo got their funding, and three years later sold Arequipa to giant Barrick Gold Corp. (TSX:ABX) for $800 million.
“It was a great ride, unbelievable ride.”
Her next story was Francisco Gold Corp., where she was a founding director.
In 2002, that company was sold to Glamis Gold Ltd. in another windfall deal.
Its main asset, El Sauzal, became one of the core value-drivers that helped Glamis merge with Goldcorp Inc. (TSX:G) to create one of the world’s largest precious-metal producers.
McLeod-Seltzer was also a director of Miramar Mining Corp. before U.S. giant Newmont Mining Corp. (TSX:NMC) swallowed it for $1.5 billion in 2007.
Despite her success, she has no plans to slow down.
These days she’s chairwoman of both Pacific Rim Mining Corp. (TSX:PMU) and Bear Creek Mining Corp. (TSX-V:BCM), lead director of Stornoway Diamond Corp. (TSX-V:SWY) and a director at Kinross Gold Corp. (TSX:K).
“It’s communication,” she said of her ability to strike deals. “You boil it down to one thing: how is this going to make me money as an investor? You have to paint that picture. My dad always said there’s a difference between stock promoters and mining promoters. I always try to remember that.”
As a mining promoter, her job is to explain to investors why each venture will pay off.
Consider Stornoway, for example.
The company plans to build Quebec’s first diamond mine, but its real strength may be executive chairwoman Eira Thomas, the woman who in 1994 led the discovery of the Diavik diamond pipes in the Northwest Territories.
Diavik has since become one of Canada’s richest diamond mines.
And there’s a big-picture story for diamonds as well, McLeod-Seltzer said.
“It’s an India and China bet because as those countries increase in wealth they tend to buy gold and now they’re tending to buy diamonds,” she said. “It’s definitely a shift.”
But not every company McLeod-Seltzer touches turns to gold.
Take Pacific Rim.
The embattled junior has been in a standoff with anti-mining activists in El Salvador for years.
They say the company’s El Dorado project threatens the environment, and the government there has not finalized the company’s permits.
In turn, Pacific Rim has filed international arbitration against the government of El Salvador seeking “hundreds of millions of dollars” in damages for breach of international and Salvadoran law.
She declined to predict when the situation would be resolved, but McLeod-Seltzer said it has tempered her adventurous spirit.
“It’s made me a lot more gun shy of certain areas in the world. To be smacked full on by political risk, you don’t want to go there again, so it’s made me a little more conservative.”
That’s a big change for a woman who years before marched headlong into Peru in the face of Shining Path guerillas and warnings from her peers.
But that’s the mining business, she explained, remembering the “nuclear winter” that clobbered the industry in the 1990s following the Bre-X scandal and commodity price slump.
“You have to have tenacity because you’re going to have really, really hard times,” she said.
That’s a skill McLeod-Seltzer has in spades, said friend and public relations veteran Mat Wilcox.
“She understands exactly what it is that needs to happen in order for any company to be successful,” Wilcox said, adding that McLeod-Seltzer is not a woman who is easily rattled.
“She’s one of the most level-headed people I’ve ever met … she’s very low key, she’s in my mind one of the most successful women in Canada and who knows that?”
Certainly the mining industry does.
In 1997, the Association of Women in Finance gave her the Award for Performance, and in 1999 the Northern Miner named her Mining Man of the Year.
And it’s doubtful she’ll be the last McLeod to shoulder the family business.
In 2003, the day after McLeod-Seltzer gave birth to her son, Lowell phoned her from a bar in Lima where he was celebrating their latest venture, Peru Copper Inc.
The Peruvian government had just granted the company the right to explore the highly prospective Toromocho property.
The price of copper was US$0.62 per pound that day, she recalled.
“My son was born under a lucky star … he sure loves his dump trucks and diggers,” McLeod-Seltzer said.
In 2007, the Aluminum Corp. of China bought Peru Copper for US$860 million.