Franco-Nevada

Franco-Nevada initially began trading as a public gold exploration company in 1983 and was led by executives Seymour Schulich and Pierre Lassonde. At the time, oil and gas royalty ownership—but not gold royalty ownership—was an established business strategy. In 1985 Franco-Nevada raised $930,000 to purchase gold royalties in a follow-on offering. The company made its first royalty investment in 1986, spending half the corporate treasury ($2 million) to acquire 4% of revenues from a mine in Nevada owned by Western States Minerals, later called Goldstrike mine. Franco-Nevada assumed that known reserves would allow the royalty to pay for itself regardless of additional exploration results. Barrick Gold Corp. acquired the Goldstrike property in 1986 and started production in 1987. The Goldstrike deposit is the largest Carlin-style deposit discovered globally and up until 2018, the mine had produced 44 Moz of gold.

In 1988 Franco-Nevada purchased a royalty on the Castle Mountain mine in California. Despite the Castle Mountain mine being unsuccessful, losing money and eventually closing, Franco-Nevada collected triple its investment of $2.8 million.

Franco-Nevada further went on to purchase royalties in various other commodities, but continued its focus on gold.

In the early 1990s, consulting geologist Ken Snyder convinced the management of Franco-Nevada to stake a play at the intersection of the Carlin and Getchell trends in Nevada, leading to the high-grade gold and silver discovery of what became the Ken Snyder Mine. Franco-Nevada concluded that the mine had a high enough silver credit to carry all operating costs, thereby creating an effective 100% gold royalty. Construction of the $84 million project was completed and first gold was produced in December 1998.

Seymour Schulich and Pierre Lassonde created a sister company to Franco-Nevada, named Euro-Nevada. Euro-Nevada had a gold-only focus while Franco-Nevada was more diversified. In June 1999, they merged Franco-Nevada and Euro-Nevada to increase liquidity and financial capacity and improve clarity for shareholders. The combined companies had a market value of $3.5 billion at the time.