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NEWS

Raleigh set for quick start

at Genesis

by Dominic Piper

here is no denying it has been a combination of head and
Theart which has led Raleigh Finlayson back into the gold
sector with Genesis Minerals Ltd.
Former Saracen Minerals and Northern Star Resources Ltd
managing director Finlayson officially succeeded Michael
Fowler as Genesis managing director in February, a move
presaged the previous September when he took the lead on a
$20.8 million capital raising, including subscribing for $7 million
in the placement himself.
The appointment marks Finlayson’s return to the West Australian
gold sector just a year after he left Northern Star following the
merger with Saracen.
“It is a bit like starting all over again and I’ve been getting my
hands dirty looking over intersections, pit shells and everything
else which goes with being a junior mining executive,” Finlayson
told GMJ in the company’s new West Perth offices.
“We have been pulling the assets apart and looking at the
industry landscape, it has taken time to get that positioning right
but we are there now. Genesis 2.0 will be revealed in early April.
That will be the first marketing push since the recapitalisation.
We want to get the foundations right and then the world is our
oyster.”
The 43-year-old projects a clear enthusiasm for starting over
again after his success at Saracen but choosing Genesis was
about more than simply getting back into the game.
The emotive part of Finlayson’s decision lies in the location of the
Genesis assets.
The company came to prominence on the back of success at
the Ulysses project, 20km south of Leonora in WA’s Eastern
Goldfields. In 2020, it also added the Kookynie project, giving it a
dominant position south of Leonora.
Both areas loom large in the Finlayson family history.
“These tenements are on the ground which was part of my
grandfather’s homestead,” Finlayson recalled. “My father grew
up there and then I grew up next door where the Kookynie
tenements sit. I spent the first 20 years of my life there – the
Grand Hotel was where I spent many of my Friday nights.
“And it goes even further. The Orient Well project was owned by
my uncle and the uncles from the other side of the family [Peter
and Chris Lalor] controlled the rest of the ground through Sons of
Gwalia. So, the entire area is attached to the pastoral and mining
Raleigh Finlayson
history of our family.”
If ancestry explains the heartfelt side of the decision, geology
and industry experience can explain the analytical reasons for

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