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Governance

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Governance

Barrick’s culture to act with integrity and transparency is embedded across our business and our supply chain.

Governance hardwires sustainability into our business

Barrick’s holistic approach to sustainability is woven into every aspect of our business.

It shapes how we manage our mines, builds the partnerships that underpin our success, drives future growth and helps create lasting value for all stakeholders.

Being sustainable ensures successful operations while attracting and retaining top talent at local, country and group-level. This commitment is reflected in our updated corporate values in 2024, reinforcing sustainability as the foundation that binds our organization together and drives long- term success.

Our sustainability framework includes a Sustainable Development Policy, seven core principles and policies on aspects such as biodiversity, tax, tailings and health & safety, all available online. All employees are trained on these as part of onsite inductions — including those joining our workforce at new or expanding operations in Pakistan and Zambia — with specialist training for those employees requiring more in-depth knowledge in an aspect-specific area.
 

Site-level Leadership with Group Oversight

Our business exists where our mines operate, so each mine is responsible for embedding sustainability into its daily functions. That includes proactive leadership on sustainability, rigorous oversight and integration into decision- making at every stage. Each operation is accountable for managing its environmental and social impact, engaging with host communities and government and ensuring compliance with global best practices, all while driving long-term value for our business and stakeholders.

Specialist mine teams include Safety, Health and Environmental officers, community relations managers and technical specialists for that mine’s specific circumstances from biodiversity to geohydrology. These teams receive ongoing support from Regional Sustainability Leads embedded into the regional executive functions and a dedicated group-level Sustainability Manager, ensuring alignment with corporate objectives and best practices.

At the highest level is our Sustainability Executive, a key member of the senior leadership and executive team, who ensures that sustainability is fully integrated into our core business strategy. This role involves overseeing the collection and analysis of critical sustainability data, tracking performance against key indicators in our Sustainability Scorecard and aligning our operations with international frameworks and stakeholder expectations.

Sustainability governance is embedded at every level of our business, from frontline site operations to executive leadership. By maintaining a structured and accountable approach, we drive continuous improvement, enhance risk management and create long-term value for our business, employees and the communities where we operate.

The Board provides overarching governance, ensuring sustainability remains central to our corporate strategy. It is supported by a range of Board-level committees (see infographic), each playing a critical role in overseeing key sustainability priorities and with the ESOC (Environmental and Social Oversight Committee) acting as a key link between management and the Board.

Sustainability is a standing agenda item at every Board meeting, reinforcing our commitment to continuous oversight and accountability. In 2024, our Q2 Board meeting included an in-depth presentation from Group Sustainability Executive Grant Beringer, highlighting progress on key initiatives, performance against sustainability targets and emerging challenges. This was not a once-off engagement. Sustainability performance and priorities are a standing item on the Board’s agenda, with regular updates and deep-dives ensuring continued oversight and strategic alignment.

This structured engagement ensures that sustainability remains a strategic priority at the highest level of decision-making.

Governance – Sustainability Report 2024

Barrick’s Sustainability Governance

The image shows a corporate governance and sustainability management structure diagram.

Business Integrity & Ethics

Operating across diverse jurisdictions, Barrick’s success depends on honesty, integrity, and transparency.

The key governance structures that maintain this principle are our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics and our full set of business integrity policies including Anti- bribery and Anti-corruption, Anti-fraud, Whistleblower and Conflict Free Gold policies, all of which are publicly available.

All employees are trained on our Code of Conduct as part of a company-wide integrity program.

In 2024, over 7,600 employees undertook refresher training on the code globally (an increase of over 900 on 2023), with 100% completion rates at all operations for the fifth consecutive year. We also have a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment. In 2024, employees across the business undertook dedicated training in our anti- harassment standard, reinforcing our commitment to a safe, respectful and inclusive workplace.

We conduct an annual review of all business integrity policies and in 2024 this included updates to our Code of Conduct, Supplier Code of Conduct and Whistleblower policy to improve legal clarity and accommodate regulatory updates.

Part of our work in 2024, and onwards to 2025, has been to increase access to materials related to business integrity including making the Code of Conduct and other documents available in additional languages such as Arabic, Swahili and Urdu.

In alignment with our long-term strategy and given we manage operations over many parliamentary terms in each geography, we pride ourselves on being apolitical and therefore do not make financial contributions to politicians or political parties, except on a limited basis as allowed by local regulations. We disclose the value and beneficiaries of any financial and in-kind political contributions which we make, whether made directly or through an intermediary.
 

Infringements

Barrick employees, contractors, third parties and community members can report potential violations of our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics and related policies confidentially and anonymously through several channels from site-based grievance mechanisms (see Community section) to our global hotline. Breaches can result in disciplinary actions from obligatory additional training, up to and including termination of employment or contract (and, if appropriate, referral to the relevant authorities).

In 2024, there were 141 reported alleged breaches, with one of these alleged infringements reported as human-rights related. All of these reports were assessed and investigations conducted as appropriate, and actions implemented where necessary. In terms of the single human-rights related complaint, lodged in the Dominican Republic, the complaint was fully investigated, and the complaint was found to be unsubstantiated and closed.

Hotline contact information is promoted through staff training and communications as well as our group-wide internal communications portal and onsite posters.

Hotline Reports Received
  2024 2023 2022
Conflict of interest / Corporate
opportunities		 7 13 8
Disclosure / controls / confidentiality / bribery 12 16 10
Human rights 1 1 1
Theft / fraud / misuse of assets 9 5 4
Workplace concerns (eg labour / harassment / safety) 104 106 117
TSF Management1 1 N/A N/A
Total 134 141 140

1 New category added to the hotline in line with GISTM Standard.
 

Gender Diversity

We are an equal opportunity employer and aim to employ candidates based on merit and individual strength, so our hiring policies do not strive to meet specific quotas or hiring targets-based on gender, race, disability, ethnicity, religious belief or sexual orientation.

We do however support the removal of wider socio- economic barriers, where possible, that can enable a workforce reflective of the demographics of our local communities. At the same time, we recognize that there is a gender imbalance in the historically male-dominated mining industry and have a KPI to encourage more women into senior management and for 30% of our Board to be composed of women.

In 2024, 40% of our Board and 14% of senior management positions were females.

Managing Risk

We can’t create and deliver sustainable value throughout the business if we do not identify, manage and effectively deal with the risks our business faces.

For every risk identified on the annual group risk register, we generate a detailed description of controls and monitoring activities to be undertaken to mitigate the risk. Finally, a residual risk rating which considers the impact of mitigating actions and controls is provided.

We recognize that risk is dynamic and to augment the annual update of the group risk register, each quarter our Senior Vice-President, Business Assurance, Risk and Business Integrity presents a group risk report to the Board’s Audit & Risk Committee. The report is informed by each region’s quarterly risk register review and update and sets out our critical risks as a group and by region as well as a global view of our strategic priorities.

In 2024 we continued to refresh the risk register with emerging risks to the business, including the addition of physical climate risk and updated our Management of Change Policy accordingly.

Reinforcing the importance of sustainability as a key driver and differentiator for our business, the risk report includes a ‘Sustainable Profitability’ section. This refers to our sustainability strategy and priorities and considers our performance against those for the quarter. As part of our on-going risk management processes, we also conduct sensitivity analyses and stress testing to assess the potential impacts of, and any changes to, our key business risks.

Our risk management process identifies, evaluates and mitigates emerging risks while ensuring agile responses. Consistent with our approach to sustainability governance, we work to connect and balance site-level ownership with group level oversight and Board responsibility.
 

Risk Registers

Each quarter, all site-level risk registers are submitted by region to the risk team for review. The risk team aggregates the results of each region’s risk registers and updates the group risk register on an annual basis. Review and aggregation is overseen by our Senior Vice-President, Business Assurance, Risk and Business Integrity, and the group register is reviewed by the executive committee prior to presentation for the Board’s Audit & Risk Committee.

Managing Supply Chain Risk

Our supply chain is one of the largest levers we have to support and deliver socio-economic upliftment. We require all our suppliers, regardless of location, to meet our standards. Our philosophy is grounded in partnership, which is a belief of engagement rather than enforcement, and in developing countries and communities where skills may be lacking, we often need to work with suppliers over time to bring them up to standard. By doing this, we both secure our own supply lines and critically also drive development and resilience for the individual and the wider community.

All our standard supply contracts include clauses that commit vendors to uphold our sustainability policies. We also undertake robust vendor due-diligence and on-boarding to drive and ensure compliance with our policies and standards. In line with our philosophy of transparency, we have released a Modern Slavery Report in 2024.