Summit Business Media’s Jonathan Moore, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of their Events Division
After the conclusion of the Hard Assets Investment Conference in San Francisco on 21-22 November, we spoke to Summit Business Media’s Jonathan Moore. As Senior Vice President and Managing Director of their Events Division, he’s in as good a position as anybody to give an impression of the event. And overall, he was well satisfied.
Record Attendance
“This year’s show has been great,” he comments. “We have a market that’s obviously fantastic and a wind at our backs. We have record attendance this year; up significantly from last year.”
The level of foot traffic convinced him that the showing this year was the strongest for some time. But, if anything, he was more impressed by the quality of attendees, which he considered the best for a long time. He says: “We have 53% new attendance from last year so it’s good we’re reaching new people. The market is obviously driving that to a large degree. We’ve got a much stronger representation this year from professional investors, specifically on the institutional side representing about 33% of our audience this year.”
In Jonathan’s view, there are two main factors driving the focus of the show. One is gold and the other is the heat around rare earth, both of which have increased the level of interest. Another influence on the attendance is San Francisco’s location, with its closeness to the mining center of Vancouver always being a great attraction. He also believes the current economic situation has had a major effect: “I think we’ve gotten to a point where the professional investor and the institutional investor are looking at hard assets in a way they haven’t in the past. It’s obviously driven by factors of the economy and currency issues, and I think that’s driving a lot of the participation that we’re seeing.”
The success of any conference is usually down to the quality of its speakers and the San Francisco event featured a lot of industry stand-outs, including Frank Holmes, Jim Dines and Rick Rule. Jonathan remarks: “We have the good fortune to have long-standing relationships with many of them and they’re involved almost every year. So they continue to be the drivers of this for us. In addition to that, we’ve got great representation from other newsletter writers and these are mixed in with corporate presentations from some of the most interesting mining opportunities in the world.”
Mix of Opinion
The various speakers give an interesting mix of opinion that defines the direction of the markets and where specific aspects and components of hard assets are going. The talks are then augmented with some technical sessions in the form of workshops, so that attendees can get detailed information in specific areas. Added to that are a number of corporate presentations that give investors the chance to find out about what projects are going on throughout the world in different categories, where companies are in their project cycle and where the investment opportunities are so they can build their portfolios.
For those who missed the show, Jonathon has others to look forward to: “Next show on our list is the Hard Assets event in New York. That’s coming up in 2011, May 9th and 10th I believe next year. Then, the other program that we run as part of our mining portfolio is the Investing in African Mining Indaba, which takes place in Cape Town, South Africa, from February 7th-10th 2011.”
This latter event is the biggest show the company runs and focuses solely on investment opportunities on the continent of Africa. It has been running for almost twenty years and is the largest of its kind. Like the Hard Assets conference, it will have well-known speakers, with Niall Ferguson and Frank Holmes being on the list. “We have participation from many of the African governments,” says Jonathan.
“They come from the Ministry of Mining at their respective countries to talk about the landscape of investment within their countries. Then we also have, similar to here, a series of large scale corporate presentations such as Anglo American, Rio Tinto, VALE, and Xstrata. The larger players come here to share the latest on the projects they have on the continent. We also have a component of the program that’s specifically dedicated to corporate social responsibility..”
Expansion Plans
Gold is currently a big influence and the traction that it’s given the market place is driving a lot of what Jonathan’s company is doing. However, it is actively looking at how it can expand both geographically and in other sectors. He says: “I think the thing that we are focused on figuring out is how do we take the things that are happening within the hard assets space, the mining space, and translate them into additional programs for us. We’re exploring new marketplaces in India and South America and we are exploring new formats domestically that will allow us to have a more targeted focus on specific areas.
He describes the New York and San Francisco conferences as “two bookends” but the intention is to look at other areas. “We should be doing things that are outside of those markets and those are the things that we’re excited about and exploring right now,” he comments.
One of the Hard Assets speakers, Adrian Day, is bullish about all commodities and believes that China’s rapid growth is going to lead to a wider focus on commodities rather than simply on gold. It’s a point Jonathan agrees with and he thinks the growth in India as well as China will drive demand in a lot of areas. He concludes: “I think the question for us will become how do we translate the expertise that we have and the relationships we have in the investing community into new opportunities for us, be they other types of commodities or other sectors. But I think we will agree with Adrian that the direction of what we see certainly translates to us having a nice run for some sustainable time.”