2012 Mining Indaba – Keynote Speakers

Tom leads IFC's investment activities in mining exploration and development. His team oversees a $500 million debt and equity portfolio spanning over 37 projects in 25 countries. Tom joined IFC in 1997 and has focused on the financing of oil, gas and mining projects, mainly in Africa and Latin America.

Tom spent five years in IFC's infrastructure department, financing projects such as airports, shipping, and power companies, again with a focus on Africa, where he was based for three years between 2006 and 2009.

Tom was appointed IFC's head for Mining in March 2011. Tom has a degree in engineering from Cambridge University, England, and an MBA from INSEAD, France. He is based in Washington DC.

Barry Eichengreen is one of the world's foremost experts on the international monetary system and global finance. His research and writing have illuminated the current financial crisis and uncovered many of its far reaching consequences. An expert on financial crises, Dr. Eichengreen has written extensively on their histories, causes and cures.

Some of his recent research compared the early stages of the current financial crisis with the Great Depression, ominously finding that our 21st century crisis started off being much more severe than the previous one. Dr. Eichengreen's writings have appeared in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and numerous other newspapers and periodicals. He writes a regular monthly column for Project Syndicate.

His credentials include: George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, London Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Senior Policy Advisor at the International Monetary Fund, 1997-98 Convener of the Bellagio Group of academics and economic officials

Dr David Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia's carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products.

Evans is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself from 1998 to 2006, causing Evans to move from being a warmist to a skeptic.

His wife Joanne Nova, a science communicator, runs joannenova.com.au, the 9th largest climate website in the world and 4th biggest skeptic site. Evans founded GoldNerds in 2007, providing information to investors on Australian gold mining companies.

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.

China Takes Off, published in Foreign Affairs in 2003 and written jointly with his wife Lyric Hughes Hale, is one of the most oft-cited surveys of China’s economic ascendency. Their newest publication, “What’s Next? Unconventional Wisdom on the Future of the Global Economy” published by Yale University Press in 2011.

Kobus is the Founder and Group Managing Director of The Beijing Axis (www.thebeijingaxis.com), a China-focused international advisory and procurement firm operating in four principal areas: Commodities, Capital, Procurement and Strategy. Clients include global multinationals with a ‘China/Asia agenda’; and Chinese/Asian multinational firms with a ‘go-global agenda’.

Kobus has been working in Asia for over 18 years and is based in Beijing. Before founding The Beijing Axis, he was Head of Investment Strategy and Global Market Research for Asia Pacific for Standard Chartered Bank Plc and, prior to that, he was a Senior Strategy Consultant with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Asia. In his early career, he was an Emerging Market Investment Strategist in London; a Treasury Economist with Standard Merchant Bank in Johannesburg; and an Economist with the South African Reserve Bank in Pretoria.

He holds an MBA from INSEAD in France, a Master of Business from Curtin in Australia and BCom Honours degrees in Finance/Investments and Economics, respectively from UJ and Unisa in South Africa.

He is regarded as a thought leader in China cross-border business, has published extensively and has been invited to present as the keynote speaker and to lead discussions in over 20 countries.