Work as a chartered accountant in Vancouver for a firm like Ernst & Young, and chances are good you will end up doing some work for a mining company.
That’s how Raman Randhawa, at the age of 27, ended up working for a pipsqueak upstart called Wheaton River Minerals when it was on the cusp of becoming Goldcorp Inc. (TSX:G) – now the world’s largest gold mining company by market capitalization.
“When I got hired on, the office literally had 12 people in the head office at that time,” Randhawa said. It now has more than 200 employees and contractors in Vancouver, and 19,000 worldwide.
Born in Richmond, Randhawa earned a bachelor of business administration degree from Simon Fraser University. After graduation, he went to work for EY, and there earned his chartered accountant designation.
Randhawa worked as audit manager on the Placer Dome account – at the time the firm's biggest client and one of Vancouver’s biggest mining companies. He caught the attention of Wheaton River Minerals founder Ian Telfer, who brought him on board right around the time the company was merging with Goldcorp. He has had roles in several facets of the company, including financial reporting, budgeting and forecasting and mergers and acquisitions.
“It was interesting to be part of a company that just kept growing from M&A,” Randhawa said. “Ian would just keep doing deal after deal, which would land on our plates.”
In 2012, Randhawa was promoted to vice-president of operations finance, making him the company’s youngest VP. He spent three years in Toronto as Goldcorp’s regional finance director for its Canada-U.S. operations. There, he realized that there were potential savings by consolidating its supply chain.
“We’re all buying the same tires, we’re all buying the same cyanide from the same supplier,” he said. “So let’s get global contracts in place and have some global Goldcorp contracts that drive and leverage volume.”
Goldcorp gave him the green light, and, by creating a global supply chain department, he was able to carve $120 million from the company’s costs annually.
Randhawa’s career goal is to become a C-suite executive.
“Ultimately I want to be a top executive at a large public corporation – ideally Goldcorp. I have a personal attachment to the company just because I’ve been there from Day 1.”
Join us to celebrate the 2015 Forty under under 40 Awards January 27, 2016 at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel. For tickets and event info visit www.biv.com/events/40under40.
