Murray Pezim, a Vancouver-based stock promoter best known for his role in the discovery of the Hemlo gold camp in Ontario and the Eskay Creek gold mine in British Columbia, has died. He was 77.
Born in Toronto on Dec. 29, 1920, Pezim didn’t make his first investment until in his thirties. A veteran of the Second World War, Pezim was working in his father’s butcher shop in the early 1950s when he invested $13,000 — his life savings — in a gold explorer called Duvay Gold Mines. The company went under just weeks later, and he lost his entire investment.
From then on, however, he was hooked on the market. Pezim stayed at the butcher shop but began taking a few hours off each day to work, unpaid, at a brokerage firm. When he had a sufficiently strong feel for the market, he packed in the family business and headed to New York City’s financial district.
He soon returned to Toronto and got his first break while working at brokerage house Jenkin Evans & Co. In the late 1950s, a man named Steven Roman came to him seeking financing for uranium mines in northern Ontario.
Pezim began promoting Denison Mines, buying in himself at 40cents. He sold his shares days later when they were valued at $17 each; the issue eventually peaked at $85. Denison went on to develop the vast uranium deposits of Elliot Lake.
Pezim remained in Toronto until 1963, when the scandal surrounding Windfall Oils and Mines all but shut down the financing of junior mining companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Pezim headed to Vancouver, where the Vancouver Stock Exchange was more amenable to speculative issues.
It was in the west that Pezim made some of his best, and worst, deals.
Among his financial missteps was promotion of oil and gas firm Bata Resources, which owned land in the Mackenzie River delta in the Northwest Territories. When short sellers began to cash in, Pezim attempted to bolster the stock out of his own pocket. He lost everything. In 1971, after making a comeback, he took a run at Armor, a U.S. meat packing company. That takeover failed, and cost him between $10 million and $12 million.
Between conventional business deals, Pezim also bankrolled some unlikely ventures, including musical greeting cards, rejuvenation pills, a fleet of tugboats (on which he lost $1.5 million) and, in 1972, with his last $250,000, a boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Canadian George Chuvalo.
The event was a bust and, once again, he was broke. He tried to free up some cash by selling his interest in an investment firm, but it wasn’t enough; Revenue Canada suggested Pezim declare bankruptcy, which he did.
With the help of friends, the resilient Pezim was soon back on the scene, flamboyant as ever (how else to describe a man who once had a former “Mr.
Poland” on staff as a masseur and who named his custom-bottled wine “Chateau Pez”). By 1976, however, he and a colleague were facing fraud charges over the acquisition by Pezim’s B.X. Development of a U.S. lime plant. The men were acquitted. By 1979, Pezim controlled 57 VSE-listed juniors.
Pezim’s career as a financier reached its zenith in the early 1980s when he backed International Corona Resources, a junior exploring a gold prospect near Marathon, Ont. Many in the industry were skeptical of the property’s potential; intensive drilling had returned poor results. Pezim, who always invested his own money in projects he supported, remained confident, and, after 76 holes and an expenditure of $2 million, drilling began to return promising grades. It wasn’t long before Pezim secured Teck as a partner, and the David Bell mine, with a reserve of 2 million oz., was brought on stream in May 1985.
Teck also backed Corona’s legal battle for ownership of an adjacent property; a case few expected Pezim could win. But win he did, in August 1989, when Teck and Corona were awarded control of the rich Williams mine that Lac Minerals had built in the Hemlo camp.
In 1988, Pezim backed Calpine Resources, which was exploring for gold at the Eskay Creek property in northern British Columbia. Exploration there uncovered the 21A zone, but its metallurgy was considered complex.
Undaunted, Pezim continued to promote the property, supporting the recommendations of the geological team exploring there. Geologists struck paydirt in 1989, when the 109th hole drilled on the property recovered 682 ft. grading 0.88 oz. gold per ton. Subsequent work led to the discovery of the rich 21B zone, now being mined by Prime Resources. Today, Eskay Creek is Canada’s highest grade gold-silver mine.
Securities regulators, who had kept a close watch on Pezim’s activities during the Eskay Creek discovery, launched a hearing based on allegations of insider trading. The case fell apart when it was learned that Pezim and two colleagues had not exercised shares during the period in question.
Regulators pressed on with a new allegation — that Pezim’s flagship company, Prime Equities, had breached its “fiduciary duty” to Calpine — which drew guffaws on the street, where everyone knew that Prime controlled dozens of juniors, including Calpine. At the end of the day, however, Pezim was found to have breached disclosure requirements. The irony of having been nailed for disclosure was not lost on Canada’s most vocal and outspoken promoter. “Me, of all people,” he mused.
Pezim also had a hand in the development of the Snip gold and Goldstream polymetallic mines in British Columbia, as well as the Jolu gold mine in Saskatchewan.
Pezim received many accolades throughout his colorful career, including the Distinguished Service Award of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada in 1989 and his induction into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in January 1998.
Pezim is survived by children Michael, Cheryl and Nancy, as well as several ex-wives.
During the early 1980s I was a stockbroker with Midland Doherty in Toronto and I recall Murray phoning Murray and much to my surprise he answered the phone himself. I liked Murray but no doubt he had a colourful life fueled by greed, alcohol and women. RIP Murray.