The Financial Post reports in its Thursday edition that Mark Bristow is playing a new role. The Post's Gabriel Friedman writes that after spending decades finding and building his own mines, the South African geologist who built a widely admired gold company in sub-Saharan Africa, is now trying to wring profits out of gold mines that someone else found and built. Mr. Bristow is four months into his job as chief executive officer at Barrick, and production at the world's second-largest gold miner is set to increase as much as 23 per cent to between 5.1 million and 5.6 million ounces this year. Mr. Bristow said that Barrick spent years "high-grading" its mines to pay down its heavy debt load. Now, in an overhaul at many mines, it is looking at lower grades to extend the lifetimes of its mines and searching for cost-efficiencies. He repeated his desire to sell some mines, and said the company is still refining its five-year guidance. "If you're a fund manager or a finance minister, don't look to us for instant gratification or easy pickings," Mr. Bristow said in a presentation of first-quarter results Wednesday. "The stakeholders who reap our rewards are those who share our long term vision, the ones who stick with us."