Chris Vollmershausen reflects on his rise to general counsel at Agnico Eagle Mines

Chris Vollmershausen attributes his early rise to a general counsel role in part to the early days of his legal career when he worked as an associate at Davies Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP. At Davies, he had the opportunity to do a lot of work in the mining sector – particularly with Agnico Eagle Mines, so he developed a strong relationship with the in-house team.

“By the time I left Davies, forty percent of my hours or so were dedicated to Agnico, so I got to know the team quite well, including the then general counsel, so when I left Davies we decided we’d stay in touch and see if opportunities ever arose,” says Vollmerhausen. After four years with Davies, he left to take his first in-house role as legal counsel at Husky Injection Molding Systems, but two years later he had a call from Agnico.

“I joined partly to expand the team, and partly with the goal of succession planning,” says Vollmershausen. When the general counsel retired in 2020, Vollmershausen was fully prepared to lead the legal department.

“Becoming general counsel at Agnico has been the pinnacle of my career so far,” he says. “It was in the works when I joined but there was never any timeline so you can never really be certain until it happens. It was definitely a nice achievement, reasonably early on in my career.”

As executive vice-president, general counsel and corporate secretary at the Canadian gold mining company, Vollmershausen oversees the entire legal function, including day-to-day securities law matters and mergers & acquisitions, in addition to corporate secretary responsibility. He also leads the organization’s government relations, First Nations, relationships and communications functions.

Over the past few years, Vollmershausen and his team have been active in supporting Agnico through a busy period of M&A. This started with the $287 million acquisition of Nunavut-based TMAC Resources in 2021. The following year, Agnico announced the successful completion of a merger of equals transaction with Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. Most recently, Agnico completed a three-party M&A deal with Yamana Gold and Pan American Silver Corp., through which Agnico acquired certain Canadian assets and subsidiaries from Yamana, including the Canadian Malartic mine.

“In three years we did three interesting, significant M&A deals which took a lot of effort from the whole team, including the legal side,” says Vollmershausen. “One of the nice things about being in-house is you get to stick around after the deal to help out with the integration and the optimization as well.”

With all such transactions, Vollmershausen and his team take a lead with the early negotiations right through to the primary documents for the plan of arrangement or takeover bid. They also navigate due diligence throughout the process.

With regard to the merger of equals with Kirkland Lake, Vollmershausen also helped with the merger of two head offices and two boards as the two businesses became one.

Vollmershausen maintains a hands-off approach of trust with his lean team, encouraging them to work independently while also developing a strong sense of judgment.

“I think the assumption has to be when you reach a certain level that the technical skills are there, and if they weren't, you wouldn't have gotten to where you are,” says Vollmershausen. “At the end of the day it’s just about judgment, and exercising that judgment and honing that, and that really goes to interacting with the board and the C suite. If they trust your judgment, you don't need to worry about the technical stuff. Everything else will fall into place.”