The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that Barrick Mining is going to end up merging its North American operations with rival Newmont. The Globe's Andrew Willis writes that Barrick's announcement of a potential initial public offering for its top-tier properties in Nevada and the Dominican Republic shows the board aims to negotiate from a position of strength. Monday's decision to embrace an IPO would create a Barrick-controlled subsidiary with about $47-billion (U.S.) of assets, all in politically stable jurisdictions. This is a deft piece of financial engineering meant to boost the miner's valuation. Barrick's math is simple. The IPO would create a company that owns a 61.5-per-cent interest in subsidiary Nevada Gold Mines, a 60-per-cent holding in the Pueblo Viejo mine in Dominican Republic and 100 per cent of the promising Fourmile project in Nevada. Newmont owns the remainder of both Nevada Gold Mines and Pueblo Viejo, in part owing to previous takeovers that Barrick unsuccessfully tried to block. Analysts are calling the spinout NewCo. RBC's Josh Wolfson says, "Newmont could still maintain an interest in consolidating Barrick's NewCo, given its high existing ownership of Barrick's NewCo assets."