Gold mining giant to open new Southern Nevada office

The world's largest gold miner has discovered treasure in the Las Vegas Valley.

Thanks to a few lucky twists of fortune, Barrick Gold Corp. stumbled upon the perfect place for its new Global Shared Services office — and it's not where you might expect.

Barrick, which is responsible for nearly half of the state's gold output, will on Friday open its new, 12,000-square-foot, 37-employee office at 2270 Corporate Circle Drive in Henderson.

"The newest faces at Barrick are Southern Nevadans," said Michael Brown, executive director of Barrick's U.S. operation.

That's important because until now, the company's 4,000 Nevada employees have been based exclusively in the north, at its five mines and Elko administrative offices. Southern Nevada has no metal mines, and hasn't ever been an operations heart for the industry's big players.

The new center makes Southern Nevada the worldwide information-technology base for a multinational mining company that operates on five continents.

And on Friday, Gov. Brian Sandoval will stop by to help Barrick announce additional on-site functions in areas including finance and environmental management. The operations will eventually boost by several times a staff count projected at 25 people when Barrick announced the office in 2014. It will also bolster a key Sandoval goal of diversifying the economy with new jobs in technology, mining and other skilled sectors.

Brown, who is based in Washington, will work part-time out of the office. Leslie Maple, Barrick's manager of communications and corporate affairs, has relocated from Elko.

Barrick's eureka moment on moving here actually took a few years — and a confluence of events.

Start with John Thornton, a former Goldman Sachs executive and Brookings Institution co-chair who helped launch the Brookings Mountain West think tank at UNLV in 2009.

Barrick named Thornton chairman of the board in 2012, and "we suddenly had an executive at Barrick who knew a lot about Nevada," Brown said.

Meanwhile, Barrick was buying renewable energy credits from MGM Resorts International's rooftop solar array at Mandalay Bay Convention Center to meet state-mandated power-portfolio requirements.

And after a fortuitous 2011 flight to Reno spent sitting next to NV Energy executive Tony Sanchez, Brown joined in 2012 with Sanchez, MGM Resorts Vice President Shelley Gitomer, Moonridge Group's Julie Murray and other local executives to launch the Greater Good Council. The circle of corporate philanthropists studies initiatives to improve local social services, education and other community needs. Brown's — and Barrick's — connection to Las Vegas strengthened.

"We just kept trying to become more deeply involved in Southern Nevada," Brown said.

The clincher, though, was Gordon Chiu's 2014 visit to Las Vegas.

Chiu, Barrick's Toronto-based vice president of information management and technology, was mulling ways to centralize IT. Brown suggested that Chiu tour Switch's massive, local data centers, which provide server colocation and cloud systems to clients ranging from Boeing and Wells Fargo to Google and eBay.

"When I looked at the Switch facility and the (tech) infrastructure here, I was pleasantly surprised at how well-connected it was to the world," Chiu said.

The Henderson office, whose landlord is Barrick board member Brian Greenspun, worked best because it's close both to McCarran International Airport and Switch's south valley operations, Brown said.

The current staff is already at 37, about half of whom are local hires. Others came from Barrick offices in Salt Lake City, Toronto and South America.

Barrick officials wouldn't disclose average salaries in the office, but they said pay was competitive with other white-collar tech jobs that the Governor's Office of Economic Development is recruiting.

Mining in general has by far the highest wages among Nevada's big employment sectors. The average metal-ore mining annual salary is more than $80,000 a year — nearly double a state average of about $43,000, according to the Nevada Mining Association.

Even as Barrick moves key companywide functions here and continues to get half of its output from Nevada, don't expect the business to move its headquarters from Toronto. Barrick is chartered in Canada and needs access to Toronto's capital markets.

But Brown said he and other Barrick executives are eager to talk to other companies that approach local cities and economic-development agencies about relocating here.

"We're committed to telling that story: 'Here's why you should come here, and what do you need to get you here?' "

Contact Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com. Find @_JRobison on Twitter.