Page 17 - CCCA 270450 Magazine_Fall 2017_for web

{ FeatuRe }

Reining in

Budgets

By Jim Middlemiss

endy king, vice-President, legal, Risk and governance, and Cor-
porate secretary at Capstone mining Corp. in vancouver, has seen
wthe highs and lows of economic cycles. king, who has built her
in-house career in the mining and forest industries, knows frsthand what
happens when commodity prices turn south—survival quickly becomes a
fght of the fttest.

“you feel the impact faster,” says king, whose employer is a base metals
miner with a focus on copper. “it’s much more cyclical and your strategy is
different depending on the resource,” she says of coping with an economic
downturn.

whether it’s minerals, oil or lumber, one thing is certain when prices
turn—budget cuts are the order of the day.

king’s most recent brush with austerity came in 2015, when copper prices
plummeted from almost Us$3 per pound in may to as low as Us$1.94
by early January 2016, a decline of almost 35%. to combat that effect, in
2015, king reduced her legal department budget by 15%. then, in early
2016, Capstone further reduced corporate staffng by 22% and general
and administrative expenses at head offce by 25%.

“as a result, everyone must do more with less resources,” she explains. “it
takes a strong team culture to manage through the downturns but in my
experience the team is stronger for it in the end.”

CANADIAN COrPOrAtE COuNSEL ASSOCIAtION | CCCA-ACCjE.Org 17