VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – While the world’s largest gold producer Barrick Gold makes headway in reducing its excessive debt and atoning for its vagaries of the past, it has appointed Mark Hill as its first chief investment officer, effective September 12, to oversee all capital allocation decisions at the company.

Barrick said Tuesday that, in the newly created position, Hill will chair Barrick's investment committee, ensuring that a high degree of consistency and rigour is applied to all capital allocation decisions – whether at existing operations, development projects, exploration (both near-mine and greenfields), or potential acquisitions and divestments.

Hill, who has more than 25 years of experience in the mining industry, rejoins Barrick after four years at private equity investment firm Waterton Global Resource Management, where he is currently a partner and head of mining. In this role, Hill leads Waterton's evaluations group and works with a multidisciplinary team to conduct asset evaluations and due-diligence reviews.

Before Waterton, Hill's positions at Barrick included VP for evaluations and VP for capital projects. He has also held senior positions with BHP Billiton, AngloGold Ashanti, Placer Dome and WMC.

"The creation of this role reflects our belief that effective capital allocation is a core responsibility of the head office. Mark's previous experience at Barrick, combined with his time at Waterton . . . make him an ideal choice to become the company's first chief investment officer,” said executive chairperson John Thornton.

Barrick noted that Hill brought added technical experience to the investment review process at Barrick, complementing the economic and financial expertise of CFO Catherine Raw. He will join the company's executive committee, as well as the growth group, and will oversee an evaluations team, which will independently scrutinise proposed expenditures before they go to the investment committee.

Hill holds a bachelor's degree in mining engineering, and a graduate diploma in mineral economics.

Barrick has been aggressively reducing its debt load by selling off noncore assets. The company is expected to achieve its debt reduction target of $2-billion in 2016, of which $968-million had already been achieved at the end of June, following a $3-billion reduction in 2015.

Barrick’s extensive asset portfolio is characterised by its large-scale, diverse and low-cost gold assets, sizeable copper operations, favourable geopolitical risk profile and excellent liquidity.