Newmont Mining Corp., the world’s largest producer of gold, says the price of the precious metal may rise to more than $1,000 an ounce in the next five to seven years as demand from Asian economies outstrips the global supply.
The gold market “is hot, and it is going to get hotter,” Denver-based Newmont’s president Pierre Lassonde said in an interview on Australian Broadcasting Corp. television. “By early next year, you are going to see $525 and down the road even a lot higher than that.”
Lassonde also said he was undecided if Newmont should make a takeover bid for Placer Dome Inc., Canada’s second-largest gold producer. Placer is fending off an $8.93 billion hostile takeover bid from Barrick, the world’s third-largest gold miner, and said last week it’s seeking alternative transactions.
“It would be fair to say that we have to at least think about it, but whether or not we are going to do something is far from evident,” he said. Still, “the suite of assets is not entirely complementary to what we have at Newmont.”
Gold prices approached $500 an ounce Monday, rising $6, or 1.2 percent, to $498.30 on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
