Jeff Quartermaine
CEO: Perseus Mining
‘We are in an excellent position to either continue to grow our business through organic or inorganic means, or actively return capital to shareholders’
JEFF Quartermaine is a shrewd operator as demonstrated by Perseus’s remarkable ascent from small-time player to the 500,000-ounce-a-year cash machine it is today. The success has been based on strong project development and an eye for an acquisition. But Quartermaine’s plans were thrown asunder when civil war erupted in Sudan. Perseus had established a presence in the Northeast African country in February 2022 following the A$230m takeover of Toronto’s Orca Gold, the owner of the Meyas Sand Gold Project.
By June, Quartermaine advised shareholders that an investment decision on the project had been delayed “for the foreseeable future” notwithstanding some $300m in credit raised just before hostilities broke out. But you can’t keep a good dealmaker down. In November, Perseus took a 19.9% position in Australian firm OreCorp, and in January made a A$258m all cash bid for the company which is intended to beat an earlier cash and shares offer by rival Silvercorp. This drama is still to be played out but if the chips fall in Quartermaine’s favour Perseus will extend its presence to East Africa. OreCorp owns the Nyanzaga Gold Project in Tanzania.
Clearly, Quartermaine is opting to put capital into projects, but he also raised shareholder expectations for rewards, saying in October they could expect “a more aggressive approach to capital management”. The firm’s maiden dividend was in 2021 and it has returned $100m since, but hopes will be high for a special dividend especially while the gold price is elevated. Elsewhere in the group, Perseus announced the A$200m underground extension of its Yaouré mine in Côte d’Ivoire. While mining underground is a departure for the group, Quartermaine is confident Perseus has the technical chops to succeed. A lot is at stake: the project will extend Yaouré to 2035 at least.
LIFE OF JEFF
One of the mining sector’s more eloquent speakers, Quartermaine has an unusual mix of skills, possessing qualifications in both engineering and accounting. He has been using them for some 25 years at various Toronto- and Australian-listed resource companies. Prior to the Perseus merger with Amara, he was CFO of Perseus from 2010 to 2013, after which he was appointed MD.
