Episode 5 Part A: Raleigh Finlayson, Managing Director (from March 2022) of Genesis Minerals

Finding the Front

Here we are with the last Episode of Finding the Front for 2021 and what a cracker it is.

In this episode we have the enormous opportunity to take some time out to get to know highly regarded gold miner and all round good bloke Raleigh Finlayson.

For those listeners who aren’t familiar with Ral, Raleigh is a goldfields born and bred lad from outback station country near Menzies which is about 130km north of Kalgoorlie. He really has had a crack at life and his story is simply a ripper.

A WA School of mines graduate, Raleigh has had a stellar career. He joined a small company called Saracen Mineral Holdings in December 2007 and by 2013 he was Managing Director, aged 34. At that stage in 2008 Saracen had a market cap of some $53m. From this point the company began to grow and grow…..and grow - culminating in 2019 under Raleigh’s guidance – of achieving the status of acquiring 50 % of the Kalgoorlie super pit for $1.1 billion dollars. The market cap of Saracen grew to a whopping $6.0bn in 2021 before merging in a mega $16 billion dollar transaction with Northern star who owned the other 50% of the super pit.

The merger between Northern Star, led by fellow WA School of Mines graduate Bill Beamont and Saracen Minerals, led by Raleigh, consolidated the Kalgoorlie-Boulders hugely famous golden mile under a single owner for the first time in its 128 year history.

When we caught up with Raleigh, he was currently on a break and immersed in studying an Advanced Management Program at Harvard University in the US while in waiting for his recently announced new role as Managing Director for Genesis Minerals to commence in March 2022. He will also be re-joining the Northern Star board in a non executive director role in April 2022.

He talks candidly about his upbringing on the station, building Saracen, the hugely important role his family plays, backing yourself in, the challenges of the Super pit acquisition, working closely with and in Northern Star, his current studies that have taken him to Harvard in the US and his excitement about his new role with Genesis Minerals which takes him back to the goldfields area that dominated his family heritage and upbringing.

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