The Great Mongolian Gold Rush
INVESTOR'S GUIDE 2004
The land of Genghis Khan has the biggest mining find in a very long time. A visit to the core of a frenzy in the middle of nowhere.
By Grainger David
I was in Mongolia, doing your standard business interview with a local gold-mining executive named Myanganbayar, when a member of the band he sponsors walked into the conference room, wearing a tan velour FUBU jumpsuit. Myanganbayar was in the process of explaining his business, Mongol Gazar, Mongolia's second-largest gold-mining company and the employer of 700 people. He mines two tons of gold a year and has revenues that are "not a little." The company started off in the cashmere business and then moved into the hotel business but settled finally in its current incarnation in 1992, once it became clear that gold mining in Mongolia was the "same as printing money."
Myanganbayar—32, short, wearing a gray Marvin Martian T-shirt, smoking Korean cigarettes—took an envelope of concert tickets from the kid in the jumpsuit. The band is called Camerton, and it is the most popular boy band in Mongolia. Besides sponsoring Camerton, Myanganbayar is the benefactor of the country's biggest annual fashion show, Goyol. He's also married to a fashion model and former Miss Mongolia contestant.
Still, you have to separate yourself from the crowd. So Myanganbayar was also the first person in Mongolia to have a Hummer H2. Hummers have to be hauled in from Russia at about $90,000 a pop. His is black and retains the sticker, half peeled off on the back window. Competition being what it is, there are now nine other H2s in the country. One is red, another belongs to the local sumo-wrestling champion, and—can a working man never rest?—seven of the nine H2s belong to other gold miners. It's just that hard to keep up.
Oh, to be young and rich in Ulan Bator.
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