Peter Munk, founder and chairman of the world’s biggest gold miner, says even now he is no “gold bug”. In a career spanning 60 years, the 82-year-old entrepreneur amassed fortunes in hi-fi consoles and a south Pacific hotel chain before turning to gold mining. A mystical belief in the metal’s value is irrelevant when it quite obviously rises and falls like anything else, he says.

But in his role at Barrick Gold, the Canadian miner, he sits atop the industry at a moment of vindication for diehard gold bugs. Inflation expectations and a fearful impulse toward bullion hoarding have pushed the gold price to sustained levels above $900 an ounce.