Directors / Committees

Following a law degree from Oxford University, Mr Poulden qualified as a Barrister, after which he moved into merchant banking where he worked for Samuel Montagu & Co Limited. Following an MBA at the London Business School, he joined the international management consultancy firm, Arthur D Little, where he worked in their European strategy practice and was co-founder of their Financial Industries Group. He has worked on natural resource projects in South America and the United States in ammonia production and oil and natural gas respectively. He has advised at a corporate finance level, on the securing of natural resource projects in the Middle East and Central Asia. He served in the UK Leadership Team of Electronic Data Systems where he worked on the merger of EDS’ global energy practice.

He provides the Board with experience of corporate strategy, corporate governance, identifies acquisitions, fund raising and for the relationship with shareholders and professional advisors.

Dr. Nicholas Badham, Director

After graduating from Oxford and obtaining a PhD from the University of Alberta, Canada, Dr Badham established the School of Economic Geology at the University of Southampton in 1973. Subsequently, he left academia to join Selection Trust as area selection and exploration research manager. In this role he transferred to BP Minerals International following their takeover of Selection Trust. He then spent 7 years with RTZ Mining & Exploration Limited, rising to the position of Chief Geologist and as such was responsible for worldwide regional area selection and exploration research. Since 1996, he has run his own exploration consulting business including amongst his consulting clients Rio Tinto plc, BHP World Minerals, Noranda Inc, Exxon Minerals S.A, Inco Technical Services Limited, Anglo American Corporation, WMC Corporate Services Inc and Phelps Dodge. During this period he was a director of West African Gold Limited and Chief geologist of Azco Mining Limited. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society, a Chartered European Geologist, a Fellow of the Society of Economic Geologists and has written as author or co-author a substantial number of geological papers.

He identifies new exploration prospects for the Group and has overall responsibility for its exploration programme.

Jonathan Harrison, Finance Director

Mr Harrison is a chartered accountant with experience in quoted and unquoted companies. Previously he spent 16 years at Intercontinental Hotels Corporation, where he held various positions as Vice President of Finance. In 1989 he joined Boddington Group plc, where he developed and became operations director of the Village Leisure Hotels division, responsible for the operation of six leisure hotels. Between February 1994 and September 1995, while still at the Boddington Group plc, he was finance director of the Country House Retirement Homes Limited business during which time the number of nursing homes nearly doubled to 31 nursing homes. In March 1997 he led a management buy-in of 25 hotels from Queens Moat Houses plc with Duke Street Capital. Six months later he managed the refinancing of the new group, County Hotels Group plc, through a listed bond offering and, in January 1999, successfully sold the company to Regal Hotel Group plc. In September 1999 he joined Topnotch Health Clubs plc and in March 2000 oversaw the company’s listing on AIM.

He has the responsibility for the relationship with the auditor and tax advisors, company secretarial and financial accounting issues, as well as for the financial assessment of any proposed acquisitions.

Professor Michael Mainelli, Non-Executive Director

Professor Mainelli is Chairman of Z/Yen, the UK’s leading risk/reward group, where he has worked since 1994 on strategy, technology, finance and business development. He started his career as a research scientist in aerospace and computer graphics and then spent seven years as a partner in a leading accountancy firm directing much of their consultancy work in the UK and overseas. Michael’s natural resources experience dates back to 1979 where his early research work led to him starting companies in seismology, cartography and oil & gas information for a Swiss firm. In the early 1980’s Michael initiated and ran the Swiss firm’s multi-million dollar oil industry consortium (Shell, BP, Chevron and Elf Aquitaine were primary partners plus 10 minor partners) to digitise the world which culminated in the development of Geodat and Mundocart, oil industry standard sets of cartographic data at scales from 1:50,000 to 1:1,000,000 and over 60 million geographic features. Dr Mainelli has worked for public, private and not-for-profits companies, led several privatisation projects, was Chief Scientist of the DTI Foresight Challenge award-winning Financial Laboratory, and Corporate Development Director on the board of Europe’s largest R&D organisation – the 12,000 strong Defence Evaluation and Research Agency of the UK’s Ministry of Defence.

He brings independent advice and is the Chairman of the Audit Committee and the Remuneration Committee.

Derek Stonley, Non-Executive Director

Mr Stonley graduated from Cambridge with a BA in Natural Sciences and has over forty years experience in the mining sector. From 1980-1987, Mr Stonley held senior positions at BP Minerals International Limited in exploration in Europe and North America for stratiform copper and lead-zinc, diamonds, gold and copper-gold porphyries. As Consulting Geologist at BP Minerals, he was responsible for the development of methodologies for valuing exploration properties worldwide. Following the sale of BP Minerals to RTZ, Mr Stonley was Senior Geologist and ultimately a Consulting Geologist at Rio Tinto Mining and Exploration Limited, involved in the exploration and assessment of projects in Africa, Russia and Europe for iron ore, diamonds, gold and bauxite. Since 2002 he has been running his independent consultancy, Derek Stonley Consulting, with particular focus in Africa and Europe.

He brings independent advice, reviews business opportunities for the Group and is a member of the Audit Committee and the Remuneration Committee.

Audit Committee