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Mining Exploration CEOs: Who Makes the Best Boss?
By John Hurst, Resourcex.com

What qualities are ideal for the junior resource company CEO? Does financial ability trump geological talent? Or vice versa?

Resourcex asked two active Chief Executive Officers in the Vancouver mining exploration community for their thoughts on this age old mining dichotomy.

Ian Foreman is president and director, Yale Resources Ltd. (TSXV: YLL). He has worked in a wide spectrum of geological environments involving both base and precious metals. Throughout the mid 1990's, Foreman worked on a series of large multi-million- dollar exploration programs in British Columbia, the Yukon and Mexico. As chief geologist, he was a key figure in putting Peru’s 1,000-tonne-per-day Santa Rosa open pit gold-silver mine into production.

“A really integral quality that a CEO or president of a junior mining exploration company has to have is an entrepreneurial spirit, a flair,” Foreman said recently. “Seldom in this industry do you have the ability to plan that far in advance. The caveat is you always have to have long-term goals, long-term plans and long-term strategies, but the nature of the business is that things change so rapidly that you have to be able to react accordingly to good results or bad results, new property, or problems – there are always problems in this industry. The willingness to take chances is really important.

“You could make comparisons to small tech companies or venture capital. There is always someone with an entrepreneurial aspect, so I think the key thing is that, as a geologist, I have the capacity to do several persons’ jobs and that for a junior mining company of the size of Yale Resources is very key. Because that not only is a way in which we get to trim our costs, but we also in the smaller scope of things it could also be a too-many-cooks spoil the broth and you don’t want too many people getting in the way. The key thing is there is a considerable saving in terms of time, energy and money.”

He stated a CEO must have the capacity to make decisions: “I’ve always been able to make decisions. And I’ve always tried to have the short-term goals of getting as much experience that I make good decisions and I’ve always believed in the mantra that it’s better to make a bad decision than no decision. Of course, you don’t want to make a bad decision and to get enough good decisions under your belt that you have then a benefit of your years of experience to give you the edge in making better decisions.

Foreman said that depending on qualified people is a big help, drawing on management and the board of directors as sounding boards to augment one’s experience and make even better decisions.

“I can always learn the financial aspects of this industry,” he said, “but it’s very difficult for a financial person to learn the geological aspects of this industry and that’s a real advantage that the geologist-CEO’s have. If you are a financial CEO, you’d better have a good geologist in your back pocket, because in this industry there are so many variables and factors that are intangibles.”

Paul Gill, president and CEO, Grenville Gold Corporation (TSXV: GVG), developed significant experience in the strategic development of such resource companies as Norsemont Mining Inc. and Lomiko Resources. Often cast in restructuring assignments, he has held the positions of president, chief financial officer, corporate secretary and vice-president of business development of Norsemont Mining Inc. and was also a co-founding director.

“I always try to segregate the thought process of putting a company together – a very junior company with less than 100 million shares out, trading at 25 cents – with a certain skill set. You have to be able to make strategic decisions. You have to say, ‘Okay, this is what I’ve got and this is where I want to go and what will get me there.’ And this is part of the business plan process. Whether it’s people, properties, or capital structure, you have to decide where the market is; what people will want to invest in, with some concept of where you’re coming from; and what tools you’ll have to start with,” he said.

“Strategic thinking is a number-one asset. It’s somewhat like chess. You could make a thousand moves and blow a lot of game pieces to get to where you want to go, or you could do it in the most efficient way possible and not sacrifice as much as you go forward.”

He also said that in any situation where you’re dealing with risk, a good CEO has to categorize acceptable risks and unacceptable risks. Having known both sides of that story, he said he can see it’s about trying to put your long-term goals in front of your short-term goals.

“I think that everyone can make short-term decisions that hurt them in the long term.
“An acceptable risk is a risk you take on a property that has a potential and you mitigate that risk by understanding the information behind the property. You do your due diligence by figuring out just what exactly is correct and incorrect about the information presented to you.”

The question of which background is best suited to the CEO position is best answered by another question: “What does the project require?”

Gill and Foreman are two CEOs with substantial successes in their portfolios, yet entirely different training for a job that some might mistakenly believe requires one kind of skill set. Gill has harnessed his political and financial background to transform a floundering Grenville Gold into a vital stock with liquidity and upward mobility. What he lacked in the geology department, his team, led by Chairman (and geologist) Len DeMelt has made up for in spades.

Foreman, on the other hand, is the CEO of Yale – an up-and-comer with several grass roots projects, a tight budget and a board of directors with some of the best finance chops a junior could hope for. In this case, Foreman’s geology strengths allow him to make quick decisions that benefit Yale while using his knowledge of the economics of mines and minerals at the negotiating table.

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