Boyd, Roosen, Quartermain: It takes grit, invention, luck to make the big time

Perseverance, a focus on geology and financial discipline and some good breaks are what’s needed to make a mining titan, some of the industry’s leaders told a conference put on by former Sprott CEO Rick Rule .

Industry legends including Canadian mining luminary Robert Quartermain, Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX: AEM; NYSE: AEM) chair Sean Boyd, Osisko Development (TSXV: ODV; NYSE: ODV) chair and CEO Sean Roosen, and Vizsla Copper (TSXV: VCU; US-OTC: VCUFF) CEO Craig Parry discussed the backstories behind their multibillion-dollar successes.

“Persistence and tenacity are everything in this business,” Parry said during the Mining Legends panel on July 11 at the Rule Symposium in Boca Raton, Fla. “You need to stay focused and keep pushing forward, even when things get tough.”

Quartermain, co-chair of Dakota Gold (NYSE-A: DC), steered Pretium Gold through a $3 billion deal for its Brucejack gold project in British Columbia. Boyd has transformed Agnico Eagle into one of the largest gold producers globally with a market capitalization of $52 billion, far bigger than Barrick Gold’s (TSX: ABX; NYSE: GOLD). Roosen discussed his journey from acquiring the Canadian Malartic asset in an $88,888 distress sale to selling it for $4 billion.

Kiss many frogs

Parry, who is also Inventa Capital co-founder and managing partner, said assessing projects on size, cost and success probability had underpinned his achievements. These include the Athabasca Basin and the Sierra Madre silver discoveries of the Panuco project Vizla is developing in Mexico.