The Big Score: Robert Friedland, INCO, And The Voisey's Bay Hustle

by Jacquie McNish

From the windswept Labrador coast, where the massive nickel deposit was discovered, to the boardrooms of Singapore, Toronto, and Vancouver where the giant poker game for Diamond Fields was played out, the story behind Voisey's Bay has enormous economic significance for Canada and international financial markets.

One of the most intriguing elements was the takeover battle for Diamond Fields that pitted the conservative management team at the world's largest nickel company, Inco Ltd., against free-wheeling stock promoter Robert Friedland.

Also playing key roles in the race for Voisey's Bay were managers from the Bronfman-controlled Edper group, prominent Wall Street and Bay Street investment houses, and leading mutual funds.

Genres: Business, Geology, Nonfiction, Biography

384 pages, Paperback

First published October 20, 1998

About the author

Jacquie McNish was born in Peterborough, Ontario, shortly after which she moved with her family through a series of leafy suburbs in the United States and Canada.
She has spent her professional career in Toronto and New York with The Wall Street Journal and the Globe and Mail. She is the author or co-author of four books, the latest of which is: Losing The Signal, The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry.
When not in the attic writing she likes to cycle along Lake Ontario.

Reviews

[Erica]

An excellent book, easy to read/follow story of the business side of Inco's acquiring Voisey's Bay Nickel deposit from Friedland/Diamond Fields. Though definitely more on the business side than the geology side of things, I still found it very interesting. It was good to see how the geology played into the business side of things at the high levels of the boardroom. Also told were the stories of the actual discovery of the deposit, the stories of the comeuppance of many junior mining companies: Inco (Now Vale-Inco), Falconbridge's Sudbury Mines (now Xstrata)in which Thomas Edison actually played a stake, Ivanhoe (Friedland's other company, which runs Oyu Tolgi), Teck, and others. It was great to read their stories and in light of them to see Friendland as a such a scum-feeder....It is hard to come away with much respect for the guy, billionaire or not. It was a prefect read on the heals of reading the Bre-x story, seeing as how that fiasco pumped up the price for Voisey's Bay and eventually crippled the Vancouver Stock Exchange, bringing down the stock of Inco with it. It would be very interesting to hear the post 2005 story...the time when Voisey Bay actually went into production. Here it is 2012 and they have been closed down now for a few years due to low nickel prices. I wonder if what was hailed at the time as the largest price ever paid for a single mineral property ($4.3 Billion) turned out okay..In 2006 Vale acquired Inco..

[Middlelo]

Great perspective on Canadian venture exchange and reads like one of those classic American merger and acquisition stories like Barbarians at the Gate.

[David]

This was a really exciting read. I really enjoyed this book.
Not technically challenging which a lot of these books can be or become too long and boring but kept a good pace and kept it easy enough for the lay person to understand and follow the story.

[Supercapacity]

Too bad she felt the need to lie about Richard Garnett thinking it would seem more books. A false account. She should have stuck the facts. He was never given credit for the discovery and made to look bad.

[JOSE LUIS]

Muy entretenido. Se lee como un thriller.

[Frederic Moisan]

Almost reads like a thriller.
I did not know of R.Friedland before. It introduced me to the rich history of speculating mining stock in Canada.

[Julian Karas]

Two stars alone just for being able to read the titanic drill intersections from the Ovoid Zone. Aside from that, a well written, well organized account of the biggest thing in exploration in the 90s, until it was eclipsed by BreX. McNish gives context while avoiding the folksy meanderings that many of these popular books about exploration are prone to. She also recounts the essential facts without getting bogged down in technical minutia.

The story is told from the point of view of promoters, shareholders, prospectors, drillers, geologists, local native bands and investors; all of the different kinds of people involved in an exploration project. So it is a very well-rounded book that shows evidence of a lot of research.

While Friedland was a great negotiator and promoter, none of his unpredictable "screwball" tactics would have been very effective had he not been in possession of such a stupendous prize. But he deserves a great deal of credit for getting the most out of the asset for himself and Diamond Field shareholders.

Some other takeaways:
-never tell another prospector about a hot showing you want to stake;
-don't risk your life for a mineral exploration project;
-luck (or bad luck )plays a big role in exploration, (if it's true that the Falconbridge guys were going to test these targets the folloing year and lost their exploration funding, I'd imagine it would take a long time to get over that).

[Nicholas]

Must read for anyone interested in Canadian Business writing.

[Ian Cassel]

An exhilarating book about Robert Friedland and his rise from Canadian penny stock promotor to one of the most influential figures in mining.

[Shannon Cole]

Well written and covers a topic that could have gotten bogged down in geology and finance - but did not.