Following an acquisition agreement for Newmont Corp. to acquire Newcrest Mining Ltd., the Newcrest interim chief executive officer said she will depart the combined entity after the transaction closes.

Initially announced in May, Newmont reached a definitive agreement to acquire Newcrest in a deal worth US$19 billion. On Tuesday, the deal received clearance from the Canadian Competition Bureau. 

Sherry Duhe, the interim chief executive officer at Newcrest, said in an interview with BNN Bloomberg Wednesday that “there’s not going to be two CEOs” and that she will be “very busy the next few months helping to bring this transaction to a smooth close.”

“We're going from being the fifth largest gold company on the planet to being by far the largest gold company on the planet with some of the best copper reserves out there,” she said.

Duhe, who previously worked as an executive at an Australian energy company, said that the energy and mining industries are “remarkably similar.” She said both industries have “global multibillion dollar businesses,” pricing volatility and a large degree of technical risk.

However, she said that the biggest difference is that the energy industry gets a lot of scrutiny, while the rhetoric around things like copper mining is about growth.

“We need to get our skates on and do this as fast as possible if we're going to decarbonize,” Duhe said.

“We need to produce more copper in the next 27 years, by the time we get to 2050 and the net zero goals, than we have in the entire last 125 years combined.”