INTRODUCTION
Just recently we had an opportunity to sit down with Tim Wood, who is the former Vice President of International Investment Conferences and currently serving as a consultant for the group. During the interview we got to talk about the work of International Investment Conferences and the work that they do, as well as focusing more closely on a couple of events that they have coming up later in the year for investors and exhibitors.
INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT CONFERENCES AND TIM WOOD
International Investment Conferences (IIC) has been around for over 20 years, founded in 1987 and averaging about 7 major conferences a year since then. Typically, about 20,000 delegates will attend the IIC conferences every year, and IIC can claim to have educated about 120,000 investors over the past decade, as well as drawing a considerable amount of finance from private and fund investors to publicly-traded natural resources companies.
Most of IICs work takes place in Cape Town, New York, Las Vegas and San Francisco, the latter two of which are the locations for the two conferences to be talked about in this article. The Cape Town event is held every February, with an obvious focus on African mining. The three other events have the Hard Assets name, which Tim Wood describes as “those alternatives like gold and silver: the base metals, precious metals or rare earthmetals”, as opposed to soft assets like cash or stocks.
IIC is itself a subsidiary of a larger company, Summit Business Media, LLC, which is involved in business to business publishing, specifically for the Illinois-based investment firm, Wind Point Partners. IIC was previously owned by another publishing company, Pfingsten Publishing.
Tim Wood brings a considerable amount of experience from his background in South Africa, with qualifications in Business Administration and International Relations. He then worked for the Chamber of Mines of South Africa from 1994.
Tim came to the United States in 2000 after his wife’s ticket was one of the winners in the annual INS diversity VISA lottery. Tim and his wife are obviously happy about their choice to come here 9 years ago, stating “We love the United States. It has a very great people, a good and generous and productive people. We really appreciate the opportunities that America has given us; opportunities that we might not have had in our own country.” Tim has certainly made the most of that opportunity, but has brought over to the United States his considerable skill in New Media, and has been the Vice President of International Investor Conferences since 2005.
HARD ASSETS CONFERENCES
So what is Hard Assets all about? Well we have already heard a little about what Hard Assets are, but how does that then translate into a viable and successful conference series? Tim Wood says that “the purpose of the shows is to introduce a large audience to the concepts of hard assets after many years where they thought that financial assets were the superior investment.” Certainly, a lot of work is being done in the metals sectors during this current financial climate to woo investors who may have been traditional stock investors, but who have seen their confidence in stocks as a form of investment suffer. “We’re educating them to understand the benefits of hard assets and the equities that trade around these products” Wood continues.
Part of the importance in these conferences is in reiterating the fact to would-be investors of the value of a balanced and diverse portfolio, and that increasingly, investment in tangible assets like gold and silver is an important part of expressing that diversity.
Exact numbers will vary, but many financial experts will suggest figures of between 10-20% as the ideal for the part of an investment portfolio that should be invested in gold, silver and other precious metals. This is certainly true of many of the experts at these Hard Assets conferences, who emphasize this, and are “very consistent in saying diversity is key, and we understand diversity in so many ways…you’d want to start investigating a mix of exposure to the metals themselves as well as to derivative instruments…a hard asset would be a gold equity or an EGF or something like that. A bullion coin is a derivate product” Wood argues.
Wood also notes that many analysts are unsure about hard assets, in that “unfortunately, the broader investment market and the broader financial analytical market has not understood hard assets.” The Hard Assets conferences however are perfectly placed to fill any gaps of knowledge that investors may feel that they have.
Delegate numbers are strong at each event, typically around the 3,000 mark and consisting of investors, financial experts, fund managers, and of course exhibitors and miners themselves. The conference is a vital opportunity for these groups to meet and for new connections to be made and for new investment opportunities to be forged.
Typically there are over 100 exhibitors at each event, many of whom are actively looking for investors for their projects. Alongside the exhibitions run a number of workshops with expert speakers on strategies and plans for investment. This makes a Hard Assets conference perfect for experienced investors looking towards the next project to invest in as well as new investors who may just be dipping their toes into investment in precious and base metals.
HARD ASSETS CONFERENCE, SAN FRANCISCO
The next Hard Assets conference of 2009 takes place at the San Francisco Marriot in San Francisco, on November 21st and 22nd, 2009.
The form and pattern of the conference follows that of New York, in that is has a range of high-quality speakers and presentations, with seminars and panels led by experts from around the globe, all passing on their advice, tips and strategies to investors looking to invest in natural resources at this time.
CONCLUSION
If you are a publicly-trading natural resource company, or other profession company or service involved in the natural resources industry, then IIC’s Hard Assets Conferences are the places where you should be exhibiting, particularly if you are looking for investment for your project. If you are an investor, keen to diversify your portfolio, then you should know that pre-registration for the Hard Assets conferences are free (your starting point should be http://www.iiconf.com.)
The Hard Assets Conferences in San Francisco are sure to be as great a success as those of previous years, and with IIC’s experience in conference management, and the wealth of experience and knowledge being shared makes these two conferences unmissable if you are at all interested in the industry.