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5. Plato
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5 Plato Asked to name the most influential chief executive at the end of the twentieth century, one might give top honors to Jack Welch, the successful and self- promoting CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001. But if asked to turn back the pages of history by a few years, Plato Malozemoff would surely be among the top contenders . And if the selection were limited to mining company executives, he would have few peers. Malozemoff guided Newmont—some would say he was Newmont— for thirty- two years, from 1954 through 1985. When he stepped down, at age seventy- six, he had been at the helm for more than half of Newmont’s sixty years as a publicly traded company and longer than almost any CEO in the annals of Ameri can business. More important, by intellect and personal persuasion, he “almost single- handedly . . . fashioned a small mining investment house into a major diversified international mining concern.”1 Yet that was hardly the measure of the man. In addition to developing and operating a number of first- class mines, Newmont was a partner in many other mining and energy ventures where it had board representation and provided technical support. It was one of the world’s largest copper producers , but it also controlled Peabody Coal, America’s largest coal company, and was one of the largest shareholders of DuPont, St. Joseph Lead, and Phelps Dodge. Mobil Oil sought its participation in offshore exploration. Because, as Malozemoff told the New York Times, he preferred “to have part of a good thing rather than all of a mediocre thing,”2 Newmont’s influence far exceeded its market capitalization in the 1980s of $1.5 billion. Additionally , Malozemoff served on the boards of numerous business, financial , and charitable organizations, putting him in touch with the important industry leaders of the day. He knew and was respected by everyone who mattered in mining. His reputation for astute project analysis and financial judgment, backed by a first- rate technical staff, meant that for more than 5.1. Plato Malozemoff, a Russian emigrant, ran Newmont for thirty- two years and greatly expanded the company’s mines and global reach. (Guy Gillette) [52.23.201.145] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:03 GMT) Plato 69 a generation virtually every deal in the mining industry crossed his desk at Newmont. He was called “brilliant,” “gifted,” “dynamic,” and “a formidable competitor ,” but also a “thorough gentleman” with “great character and integrity ” whose dealings were “honorable and fair.” Robert Macdonald, who for many years ran Newmont’s research laboratory at Danbury, Connecticut, says he was “the smartest man in the room and it didn’t matter how many people were in the room.”3 Forbes called him a “renaissance miner.”4 Even those who crossed swords with him in epic battles held him in high esteem. “I thought he was a great man,” says Rudolph Agnew, the former chairman of Consolidated Gold Fields of London and the Newmont director credited with finally dislodging him from his perch. “You have to remember the place that Plato occupied in the mining industry and the place he occupied in his own mind.”5 His hubris was both inherited and firmly grounded. He graduated, after three years, at the top of his high school class in Oakland, California, spent a year studying music in Europe, and then entered the University of California at Berkeley, where he graduated magna cum laude in metallurgical engineering in 1931. A year later he received his master’s degree from the Montana School of Mines, again graduating magna cum laude. In accepting his first job with the Montana Bureau of Mines at $50 a month, he turned down an offer of $250 to be first violinist with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. He spoke French and Russian fluently and learned Spanish early in his career. A master chess player, which he said helped him think strategically , he was also a fierce competitor at tennis and golf. Like two of his predecessors, William Boyce Thompson and Fred Searls Jr., Malozemoff spent his early years in a gold- mining camp—but in Siberia, not the Ameri can West. Shortly after his birth in August 1909 in St. Petersburg, Russia (his given name was Platon Alexandrovich), his father, Alexander, was exiled to Siberia for his political opposition to the czar. A well- educated engineer with a command of Latin, Greek, German, French, and philosophy,6 he was able to find a...