Record high gold prices add millions to shareholdings of company bosses, board members

Gold’s bull run is showering riches on mining bosses, delivering unexpectedly hefty multi million-dollar windfalls on cheap stock grants. Prices for gold have soared 45 per cent this year, hitting successive highs above $US3880 an ounce this week and putting the precious metal on track for its best year since 1979. The run has dragged almost all of Australia’s gold miners to record highs since Monday, generating a 7.1 per cent return for the S&P-ASX200’s previously-lagging materials index in the past month. That’s more than double the parent barometer’s 2.8 per cent gain over the same period. It’s the biggest wealth creation in gold in a century, with the rewards spreading beyond executive ranks to also enrich non-executive directors. The share price surges have not just dramatically revalued the personal shareholdings of gold company bosses including Raleigh Finlayson (Genesis Minerals), Mark Clark (Capricorn Metals), Morgan Hart (Emerald Resources), Luke Creagh (Ora Banda Mining) and Richard Hyde (West African Resources), but inflated the potential worth of sometimes tens of millions of unvested performance-linked rights and options granted as part of their pay packets when gold prices were significantly lower. The windfalls will likely catapult some of them into the top echelon of Australia’s best paid chief executives for the 2026 financial year when the value of vested stock is included. Mr Finlayson is arguably the biggest beneficiary of the gold boom, last week pocketing a $50m-plus profit after exercising the last of 24.5 million options awarded by the Genesis board on his appointment as then fledgling miner’s chief executive four years ago. The 12.25 million options were exercised at just $1.05 apiece into a surging Genesis share price that hit a record $6.20 on Friday. After selling some of the stock to pay for the exercise costs, Mr Finlayson emerged with 9.8 million new shares that have increased his Genesis holding to 36.01 million shares valued at $221.1m at the latest closing price of $6.14. Over at Capricorn Metals, executive chair Mark Clark hasn’t missed out either. Last month, he pocketed another $2.2m of stock as nearly 150,000 performance rights vested, increasing his holding to 17.5m shares worth nearly $236m at Friday’s lower close of $13.48. Morgan Hart, Emerald Resources’ long-time boss, is sitting on a holding that has been inflated to $201.6m after the more than 50 per cent rise in the miner’s shares since August to $5.12 . However, plenty of other staff are in the money too. The company has issued hundreds of thousands of new shares to employees over this year on the exercise of options at strike prices of as low as 52¢ apiece. Evolution Mining’s Jake Klein, who in July transitioned from chief executive to non-executive chair of the company he ran for 15 years, cashed down in mid-August, pocketing $36.5m after bulking up on 1.2 million performance rights that vested into free shares worth nearly $10m. He retains nearly $121m of shares at Friday’s closing price of $10.98, as well as unvested rights worth $17m, assuming they vest at current prices. Emerging miner Ora Banda Mining chief executive Luke Creagh had a payday in November last year, realising $9m from share sales off the back of exercising 14 million performance rights into shares at no cost. He has 64.3m shares worth more than $80m, including 50m shares that came out of escrow only on June 30. But he’s also sitting on a mountain of performance and bonus rights, more than 57 million of them, with expiry dates out to 2029. That’s potentially another $81m of stock. The boss of $35 billion gold producer Northern Star Resources, Stuart Tonkin isn’t as leveraged to stock as his peers, holding just 250,000 shares worth about $6.4m. However, there’s also 1.79m rights-related shares potentially worth $43.8m in the offing if Mr Tonkin hits his performance targets. Having just presided over the opening of a second gold mine in Burkina Faso, West African Resources founder and executive chair Richard Hyde has a $52m shareholding after exercising nearly one million performance rights in May. Gold company boards are also cashing in. Genesis director and corporate lawyer Michael Bowen had his own $6.9m payday last month, adding 1.2 million shares to his holding after exercising 1.5m options, also at $1.05, through the exercise facility. Ora Banda chair Peter Mansell, another lawyer, has $13.2m of shares in the miner. London-listed Greatland Gold has had a mixed time since floating earlier this year, with its shares little changed from the $7.40 it hit on debut. However, it’s done well enough for chair Mark Barnaba, who is sitting on $10.3m of shares, while fellow director and former Fortescue Metals Group chair Elizabeth Gaines has nearly $6m of stock.