A veteran mining banker is departing RBC Capital Markets to join the senior ranks at Macquarie Capital, an Australian investment bank.
Lance Rishor, who spent 20 years at Royal Bank of Canada, started a new role at Macquarie as a managing director this week. Mr. Rishor will work from the firm’s Toronto office and help to expand its mining business in North America. He will work alongside David Cobbold, the vice-chairman of Macquarie Capital in Canada.
The hire was made in an active period for mergers and acquisitions in the Canadian mining industry, especially for gold miners. In recent years, many single-asset miners – companies that have only one mine or development project – have been bought up by larger players with a more diversified portfolio. Industry experts expect this trend to continue.
Some deals have been between Australian miners and Canadian companies. In November, Australia’s Newcrest Mining Ltd. announced a $3.5-billion takeover of Canada’s Pretium Resources Ltd., a single-asset gold miner based in Vancouver.
Macquarie Capital is the investment banking division of Macquarie Group Ltd., a financial services conglomerate headquartered in Sydney. It entered the Canadian market about two decades ago, where it started its first infrastructure fund outside of Australia.
Stephen Yan, a spokesperson for Macquarie Capital, said the firm’s Canadian business has done more than $33-billion in deals since 2017, mostly in the energy, mining and infrastructure sectors. It advised Australian technology vendor Link Administration Holdings Ltd. when Toronto-based legal tech consolidator Dye & Durham Ltd. announced an agreement to purchase it for $3.2-billion in December. The deal is D&D’s largest acquisition to date.
Mr. Yan said Macquarie expects mining companies to “aggressively pursue” M&A this year, and anticipates strong market conditions for miners with exposure to base and battery metals as demand for electric vehicles increases.
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