Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s largest gold producer, may use some of the $4 billion it is raising in a share sale for acquisitions of “higher-risk projects,” the company’s chief executive officer said.

“Raising equity proceeds allows us to de-leverage the balance sheet, ensure we have a strong capital structure and financial capacity to support our operations, fund our projects and the capacity to look at new acquisitions as well,” Barrick CEO Aaron Regent said yesterday at a mining conference in Toronto. “We’ll be looking at less developed countries. We have some room to take on higher-risk projects.”

Regent didn’t specify which projects he was referring to.

“If they found something in a higher political-risk region, their large profile of generally low political-risk assets could absorb it,” Adam Graf, an analyst with Dahlman Rose & Co. in New York, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

The company sold 94.8 million common shares for $36.95 apiece, Barrick said Sept. 9 in a statement. Underwriters exercised their option to increase the sale by an additional 14.21 million shares in what is the biggest stock offering in Canadian history.

Barrick raised the funds to unwind fixed-price bullion contracts as part of efforts to tie the company’s valuation more closely to the price of gold, which rose this week to the highest price since March 2008. Bullion producers are trying to increase reserves to benefit from the higher prices, which haven’t dipped below $900 an ounce since May.

Shares Rise

Barrick rose 18 cents to C$41.17 at 4:18 p.m. in Toronto Stock Exchange trading. The shares have declined 7.9 percent this year. Barrick is the second-worst performer this year on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Gold and Silver Index.

Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd., the Canadian gold producer that’s quadrupling output, may use rising revenue to increase dividends and buy assets in the Arctic and Mexico, Chief Executive Officer Sean Boyd said in an interview last month.

Barrick said on May 7 that it will start building its $3 billion Pascua-Lama mine project on the Chile-Argentina border after the two South American countries resolved a tax dispute over the project. The mine is estimated to yield on average as much as 700,000 ounces of gold and 25 million ounces of silver annually over an expected life of at least 25 years after it starts production in 2013.

Barrick began output at its Buzwagi mine in Tanzania in May. The Cortez Hills project in Nevada and Pueblo Viejo in the Dominican Republic are meeting their budgets and are on schedule to start production in 2010 and 2011, respectively, Regent said.

To contact the reporter responsible for this story: Rob Delaney in Toronto at robdelaney@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 11, 2009 17:30 EDT