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NIALL FERGUSON

Niall Ferguson is one of the world's leading historians of the global economy and author of such internationally-acclaimed works as The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power and The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West. His new book, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, is an international bestseller and the basis for a multipart television documentary that recently won the International Emmy Award for best documentary.

Controversial, expansive, and eloquent, Ferguson has been called “the most talented British historian of his generation”. But the ambitious themes he explores in his work have urgent relevance to the present as well as the past: the costs and benefits of economic globalization; the interface between finance and politics; the lessons to be learned from the British experience of empire; and most recently, the strengths and limitation of American global power.

A public intellectual whose work impacts finance, government, and academia, Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

A prolific commentator on contemporary economics and politics for the American and British press (as well as an experienced radio and television presenter), his work regularly appears in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, and many other publications. He is a regular contributor to the Financial Times.

An accomplished speaker, Ferguson’s presentations are celebrated for their scintillating wit and their analytical clarity. Among his numerous speech topics:

* The Ascent and Descent of Money: What Went Wrong with Western Finance?
* Rebuilding Capitalism after the Global Financial Crisis
* Globalization: Past, Present and Possible Futures
* The Great Depression 2.0: The Credit Crunch in Historical Perspective
* Are Capitalism and Democracy Bound to Win?
* Political Risk and the Global Business Environment
* Business Empires: How Big Companies Rise and Fall

Graham Birch
Director
Petropavlosk

Graham started his career as a geologist, gaining a PhD from Imperial College in 1984. He then became a gold analyst with “sell-side” broking firms before joining Julian Baring at Mercury Asset Management (now BlackRock) in 1993. At Mercury, Graham helped launch the Mining Trust – the largest Investment Trust float at the time. After becoming team head in 1998, Graham broadened the fund range into areas such as Energy, Alternative Energy and Agriculture. Gold remained a focus though, and Graham won numerous performance awards as manager of the $3bn BlackRock Gold & General Fund. Under Graham’s leadership, natural resources funds at BlackRock grew from $2bn to about $50 billion in total. Since retiring from BlackRock in 2010, Graham has become a non-exec director at Petropavlovsk and is Vice Chair at Rothamsted Research. Graham’s most recent venture is into farming and together with his wife, he owns over 2,000 acres in Dorset.

David Hale
Founding Chairman
David Hale Global Economics

David Hale is a Chicago-based global economist and founding chairman of David Hale Global Economics. His clients include financial institutions in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa.

Hale writes for major publications and is a member of various institutions and organizations such as the National Association of Business Economists, Academic Advisory Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Competitive Markets Advisory Council of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and many others.

David Hale is currently coauthoring a book on the Chinese economy. Hale will soon publish “What’s Next?” with Yale Press, launch an EBookstore featuring major economic thinkers on his new website DavidHaleweb.com.

Frank E. Holmes
Chief Executive Officer, Chief Investment Officer
U.S. Global Investors, Inc.

Frank Holmes is CEO and Chief Investment Officer of U.S. Global Investors, Inc., which manages a diversified family of mutual funds and hedge funds specializing in natural resources, emerging markets and infrastructure.

The company’s funds have earned more than two dozen Lipper Fund Awards and certificates since 2000. The World Precious Minerals Fund (UNWPX) was Lipper’s top-performing gold fund in 2009, the second time in four years for that achievement.

Mr. Holmes was 2006 mining fund manager of the year for Mining Journal, a leading publication for the global resources industry, and he is co-author of “The Goldwatcher: Demystifying Gold Investing.”

He is also an advisor to the International Crisis Group, which works to resolve global conflict, and the William J. Clinton Foundation on sustainable development in nations with resource-based economies.

Mr. Holmes is a much-sought-after conference speaker and a regular commentator on financial television. He has been profiled by Fortune, Barron’s, The Financial Times and other publications.

Peter Seligmann
Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO
Conservation International

Peter A. Seligmann has been a leader in creating conservation solutions for the past 34 years. Since he founded the organization in 1987, CI has earned a reputation as an organization on the cutting edge, creating innovative and lasting solutions to the threats facing humanity, biodiversity and the natural systems that sustain us all. He has developed strong partnerships between CI and leaders in science, industry, government, entertainment and communities around the world. He continues to prove that healthy ecosystems are essential for the present and future well-being of humanity and all life on Earth.

Mr. Seligmann serves on the advisory councils of the Jackson Hole Land Trust, Ecotrust and other not-for-profit organizations, including the Wild Salmon Center. Peter is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. President Clinton named him a member of the Enterprise for the Americas Board in 2000.

He began his career in 1976 at The Nature Conservancy, serving as the organization’s western region land steward. He later became Director of the California Nature Conservancy. Mr. Seligmann has a Masters of Science in Forestry and Environmental Science from Yale University and a Bachelor of Science in Wildlife Ecology from Rutgers University and an Honorary Doctorates in Science from Michigan State University and Rutgers University.

James Turk
Founder and Chairman
GoldMoney

James Turk is the founder and chairman of GoldMoney (www.goldmoney.com), a Jersey, Channel Islands company operating the digital gold currency for which he has been awarded four US patents. Since its launch in 2001 GoldMoney has become a leading provider of physical gold, silver and platinum bullion to buyers worldwide. It is presently storing in vaults in London, Zurich and Hong Kong over US$1 billion of precious metals owned by customers located in more than 100 countries.

James Turk has specialized in international banking, finance and investments since graduating in 1969 from George Washington University with a B.A. degree in International Economics. He began his business career with The Chase Manhattan Bank (now J.P. Morgan Chase), which included assignments in Thailand, the Philippines and Hong Kong. In 1980 he joined the private investment and trading company of a prominent precious metals trader. He moved to the United Arab Emirates in December 1983 to be appointed Manager of the Commodity Department of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, a position he held until resigning in 1987.

James Turk has written several monographs and numerous articles on money and banking, much of which can be found on his Free Gold Money Report website, (www.fgmr.com). He is the co-author of The Coming Collapse of the Dollar (Doubleday 2004), which has been updated for a paperback version entitled The Collapse of the Dollar (www.dollarcollapse.com).

Kobus van der Wath
Chief Executive, Bateman Beijing Axis
Founder & Group Managing Director, THE BEIJING AXIS

Kobus is the Chief Executive of Bateman Beijing Axis (www.batemanbeijingaxis.com), a JV between THE BEIJING AXIS and Bateman Engineering N.V. Bateman Beijing Axis (BBA) is a China-focused global procurement house that provides high value China procurement services to international firms and global procurement solutions to Chinese enterprises. BBA also does commodity marketing, procurement and trading. Kobus is also the Founder and Group Managing Director of THE BEIJING AXIS (www.thebeijingaxis.com), a cross-border business bridge to/from China in the areas of Strategy, Sourcing and Investment. Prior to founding THE BEIJING AXIS he was Head of Investment Strategy and Global Market Research for Asia Pacific for Standard Chartered Bank and previous to that he was a Senior Strategy Consultant with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Asia. Kobus holds an MBA from INSEAD and an MBus (IT) from Curtin University of Technology. He has been working in Asia for over 16 years and is based in Beijing. In 2009, Kobus was included as one of 40 ‘foreign entrepreneurs’ in China, to be profiled in a book ‘China Entrepreneur’ by Professor Juan Fernandez, from CEIBS Business School in Shanghai. He is an accomplished author and public speaker on China and Asia.