David Walsh (11 August 1945 – 4 June 1998) was a Canadian businessman in the oil and gas and mining industries.

Biography

Walsh was founder and CEO of the

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

company

Bre-X Bre-X was a group of companies in Canada. Bre-X Minerals Ltd., a major part of Bre-X based in Calgary, was involved in a major gold mining scandal when it reported it was sitting on an enormous gold deposit at , East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Bre-X b ...

, which was involved in one of the largest

stock market A stock market, equity market, or share market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks (also called shares), which represent ownership claims on businesses; these may include ''securities'' listed on a public stock exchange, as ...

scandals in Canadian history. Although Walsh had been oblivious to or dismissive of warning signs before the outbreak of the scandal, he called in RCMP investigators once the fraud was identified, and assisted the RCMP in their criminal investigation. Before the Bre-X fraud, Walsh had run several successful oil and gas companies with properties throughout the United States and Canada and had been a stock broker, trust company officer, and portfolio manager. He died of an apparent

aneurysm An aneurysm is an outward bulging, likened to a bubble or balloon, caused by a localized, abnormal, weak spot on a blood vessel wall. Aneurysms may be a result of a hereditary condition or an acquired disease. Aneurysms can also be a nidus (s ...

in 1998, suffered at his home in the

Bahamas The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to ...

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was estab ...

(5 June 1998)
"Bre-X scandal haunts former president even at death"

CNN.com CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

. Retrieved on 15 September 2008.

In popular culture

*The Bre-X scandal inspired the 2016 film ''

Gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...

'', in which

Matthew McConaughey Matthew David McConaughey ( ; born November 4, 1969) is an American actor. He had his breakout role with a supporting performance in the coming-of-age comedy '' Dazed and Confused'' (1993). After a number of supporting roles, his first succes ...

plays Kenny Wells, who is based on Walsh.

References

:* 1945 births 1998 deaths Businesspeople from Montreal Businesspeople in metals Canadian chief executives Canadian expatriates in the Bahamas Canadian stockbrokers Canadian mining businesspeople {{Canada-business-bio-stub