Since its founding in 1987, Ivanhoe Capital Corporation has specialized in the provision of venture capital, project financing and related financial services for a roster of international business enterprises.
Operating from bases in Singapore, Beijing, London and Vancouver, Ivanhoe Capital is owned and directed by its Chairman and founder, Robert M. Friedland, and his family.
Under Mr. Friedland's leadership, executives within the Ivanhoe group and associated companies have raised more than US$35 billion of capital through a diverse range of financing vehicles on world capital markets since 1993. This capital has been invested in more than 30 nations, directed primarily at the minerals and energy resources sectors and communications technologies. Some successive owners have invested billions of additional dollars to advance and expand some benefiting projects.
Companies presently associated with Ivanhoe Capital include Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN; OTCQX: IVPAF), Ivanhoe Electric (NYSE: IE; TSX: IE), Sunrise Energy Metals (ASX: SRL) I-Pulse, Ivanhoe Atlantic (formerly High Power Exploration), VRB Energy, and Pure Lithium
Founder and Executive Co-Chairman, Ivanhoe Mines
Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, I-Pulse
Founder and Executive Chairman, Ivanhoe Electric
Founder and Chairman, Ivanhoe Capital
Robert Friedland is a renowned financier and entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in the global financial and mineral resources industries. He is widely recognized for his role as an entrepreneurial explorer, technology innovator, and company builder.
Mr. Friedland is currently founder and executive co-chairman of Toronto-listed Ivanhoe Mines, a leader in the mining and precious metals industry, as well as co-founder, chairman and CEO of I-Pulse, founder and executive chairman of Ivanhoe Electric, and co-chairman of Sunrise Energy Metals.
Before founding the original Ivanhoe Mines in 1994, Mr. Friedland was a co-founding principal investor in the establishment in Canada of Diamond Fields Resources in late 1992 and played a prominent role in the company's public launch. Assuming co-chairmanship in 1994 after company-funded exploration discovered high-grade nickel at Voisey’s Bay in Newfoundland & Labrador, on Canada’s East Coast, Mr. Friedland guided financing and investor strategies and led negotiations for the subsequent sale of the tier-one discovery to INCO for C$4.3 billion in 1996. The mine began production in 2005. Now owned by Vale, it is the world's fourth-largest nickel producer and accounts for 30% of Canada's nickel output.
Also in 1992, Mr. Friedland led the discovery and sale of Fairbanks Gold’s Fort Knox Deposit in Alaska to Amax Gold for US$152 million. Owned by international miner Kinross since 1998, Fort Knox poured its seven-millionth ounce of gold in July 2016, its 20th year of operation.
Mr. Friedland’s enterprise and leadership received industry recognition in January 2016 when he was inducted into the prestigious Canadian Mining Hall of Fame. The citation acknowledged his company- building and exploration achievements, honoring him as “a dynamic, transformative force in the Canadian and international mining industries” and “one of the most recognized mining personalities and achievers in the world”. Mr. Friedland said at the ceremony that he shared the honor with several teams of dedicated individuals whose efforts with his companies during the past 30 years had contributed to a series of notable discoveries and new mines. Housed at the University of Toronto, the Hall of Fame is featured in the Treasures from Earth galleries at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.
In May 2017, Mr. Friedland received a Lifetime Achievement Award during the Canadian Mining Symposium at Canada House in London, England – a career recognition by the Northern Miner, the century-old flagship of Canada’s leading mining-industry media group. This follows the U.K.-based Mining Journal’s successive rankings of Mr. Friedland from 2016 through 2022 as one of the Top 20 Most Influential People shaping the future of the world of mining, declaring him “the undisputed king of junior development”. Also in 2016, Canada’s Financial Post Magazine named Mr. Friedland one of 25 members of its inaugural Power List – termed “the biggest, buzziest and most influential movers and shakers in Canada and beyond”.
In December 2021, Mr. Friedland was inducted into the American Mining Hall of Fame in a ceremony held in Tucson, Arizona, in recognition of his outstanding lifetime achievements advancing the American and/or global mineral resources industry. The citation acknowledged Mr. Friedland as “an entrepreneurial explorer, technology innovator and company builder” and someone who “has successfully developed a portfolio of respected public and private companies whose initiatives have led to several of the world’s most significant mineral discoveries and mine developments, applications of disruptive technologies and contributions to significant economic growth in established and emerging markets in the Asia Pacific Region, Southern Africa and the Americas”.
International philanthropic initiatives and engagements by the Friedland family are directed through the not-for-profit Friedland Foundation.
Mr. Friedland holds United States and Canadian citizenship and resides in Singapore. He graduated from Reed College, in Oregon, USA, in 1974 with an undergraduate degree in political science.
Ivanhoe Capital Corporation has specialized in the provision of venture capital, project financing and related financial services for a roster of international business enterprises since its founding in 1987.
The company, with business bases in Singapore, Beijing, London and Vancouver, is owned and directed by its Chairman and founder, Robert M. Friedland, and his family.
Under Mr. Friedland’s leadership, executives within the Ivanhoe Group and associated companies have raised more than US$35 billion through a diverse range of financing vehicles on world capital markets since 1993. This capital has been invested in more than 30 countries across six continents, directed primarily at the mineral extraction and disruptive technology sectors.
Empowered initiatives by public and private companies have led to several of the world’s most significant mineral discoveries and mine developments, applications of disruptive technologies and contributions to significant economic growth in established and emerging markets in the Asia Pacific Region, Southern Africa and the Americas.
Companies presently associated with Ivanhoe Capital include Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN; OTCQX: IVPAF), Ivanhoe Electric (NYSE: IE; TSX: IE), Sunrise Energy Metals (ASX: SRL), I-Pulse, Ivanhoe Atlantic (formerly High Power Exploration).
Since 1993, the Ivanhoe Mines enterprise brand has steadily evolved through dual founding companies established by Mr. Friedland, each becoming pre-eminent, publicly traded flagships with portfolios of industry-leading mining and mineral exploration ventures.
In 1993, he launched the corporate precursor to African Minerals – which in turn was a forerunner of the current Ivanhoe Mines – to pursue mineral interests in Africa. It became Ivanhoe Mines in 2013 and now is developing its three world-scale mining projects in Southern Africa. In September 2018, Mr. Friedland assumed Executive Co-Chairmanship of the company following its completion of a C$723 million strategic equity investment by China-based CITIC Metal Africa, part of China’s giant CITIC conglomerate. In August 2019, CITIC completed its second strategic equity investment of C$612 million, bringing its investment in Ivanhoe to more than C$1.3 billion (US$1 billion).
Mr. Friedland has served in several senior leadership roles, including Executive Chairman and Chairman, of both the current and the original Ivanhoe Mines corporate entities over a combined span of 24 years.
The original Ivanhoe Mines, founded under the Indochina Goldfields nameplate in 1994, grew to lead a series of notable mining and exploration projects in the Asia Pacific region after completing a successful, initial public offering in 1996. Indochina adopted the Ivanhoe Mines name in 1999 and built the brand on its successes during the following 13 years.
Between 1996 and 2012, the original Ivanhoe Mines and its subsidiaries conducted or participated in mining operations in Mongolia, Australia, China, Myanmar, South Korea and Fiji, and built a large shareholder base through listings on North America’s Toronto, New York and NASDAQ stock exchanges. (Founded in 1994 as Indochina Goldfields – a name that reflected its initial mining interests in the Asia Pacific region – it was the first to adopt the more universal Ivanhoe Mines identity in 1999.)
Mr. Friedland served variously as Executive Chairman and Chairman for 17 years, until May 2011. He was the founding President, and also Chief Executive Officer from June 1996 to May 2006, and again from October 2010 to April 2012.
In 2000, Ivanhoe Mines began exploration in Mongolia that led to a decade of discoveries that revealed a 12.4-kilometre-long (7.7-mile), tier-one chain of copper and gold deposits in the South Gobi region. Construction of the Oyu Tolgoi mining complex began in 2010 and production started in 2013.
The epic Oyu Tolgoi Mine produced a reported 780,000 tonnes of copper, 1.8 million ounces of gold and
4.5 million ounces of silver – and generated US$2.1 billion of operating cash flow (before interest and tax) – between 2014 and 2017. But 80% of Oyu Tolgoi’s vast mineral wealth is deposited deeper underground, where copper grades are 360% higher than those found in the open pit. Initial production from the new, underground mine is expected in 2021, further advancing Oyu Tolgoi on its projected course to become the world's third-largest copper mine.
In 2015, the operating company, Oyu Tolgoi LLC, signed a US$4.4 billion project-finance facility – one of the largest ever arranged in the global mining industry – with a syndicate of 20 international financial institutions, including agencies representing the governments of Canada, the U.S. and Australia, which also agreed to a total debt capacity of US$6.0 billion.
International mining giant Rio Tinto acquired control of the original Ivanhoe Mines in 2012 and as required under an agreement with Mr. Friedland, surrendered the Ivanhoe identity and renamed the company Turquoise Hill Resources – completing another chapter in the ongoing Ivanhoe Mines story.
Mr. Friedland is co-founder, Chairman and CEO of I-Pulse, a private company formed in 2007 that is developing revolutionary commercial applications for pulsed power technology to tackle some of today’s most pressing global challenges. The technology repeatedly compresses and releases pulses of electrical energy in billionths of a second in ways to disrupt major heavy industrial processes, in manufacturing, resource exploration, and energy generation, in ways to make them more cost effective, more efficient, and more sustainable.
The ultra-high-powered discharges can be directed to: shape and assemble metals at high speeds, enabling new forming and welding applications; generate electrical fields that reveal the presence of chargeable or resistive mineral deposits, or water and oil reservoirs, at depths beyond the reach of conventional survey technologies; crush rock containing minerals or gemstones and improve extraction with significantly reduced energy requirements; reconnect geothermal production wellbores to reservoirs by removing blockages without chemicals or explosives; and disaggregate rock and rapidly penetrate hard rock for deep drilling. In 2024, I-Pulse also launched its latest venture for an AI-powered, precision high power pulsed weed killing tool. I-Pulse currently has facilities in Toulouse, France; Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA; Detroit, Michigan, USA; Calgary, Canada; Tokyo, Japan; and London, United Kingdom.
Mr. Friedland is Chairman of Blue Spark Energy, a former subsidiary of I-Pulse that was distributed to existing shareholders in 2024. Blue Spark Energy was formed in 2011 to target the energy industry. The proprietary high-pulsed powered well stimulation technology has a a proven track record of immediately enhancing production and injections rates in existing energy wells. It lowers costs, minimizes well downtime and does this via clean electricity in place of chemicals, explosives or mechanical means that bring substantial risk to the operation and environment. Blue Spark has been adopted by many of the major energy companies today and is rapidly expanding both their reach and application footprint globally.
In November 2022, I-Pulse and Breakthrough Energy Ventures-Europe (BEV-E), founded by Bill Gates and backed by many of the world's top business leaders, announced the establishment of I-ROX, which is focused on demonstrating that short, high-intensity bursts of energy delivered using pulsed-power technology can quickly and efficiently shatter rocks and mineral ores. This process, which targets tensile weakness in rocks, could substantially reduce the time, energy consumption, and thereby the significant emissions footprint, as well as increasing recovery of the critical minerals essential for enabling a range of clean energy technologies. In December 2022, I-Pulse and I-ROX announced a comprehensive collaboration arrangement with BHP, a world-leading resources company, to identify and develop applications of pulsed-power technology across multiple aspects of the mining industry.
Ivanhoe Atlantic is strategic critical minerals supplier that has I-Pulse, co-founded and chaired by Mr. Mr. Friedland, as it’s major shareholder. Ivanhoe Atlantic’s current focus is bringing the ultra-high-grade long- life Kon Kweni Project in Guinea into production to deliver a low carbon sustainable supply of iron ore in support of the move to green steel.
Mr. Friedland is also Founder and Executive Chairman of Ivanhoe Electric (NYSE: IE; TSX: IE), a US minerals exploration and development company focused on advancing its portfolio of electric metals projects located primarily in the United States and Saudi Arabia. Ivanhoe Electric applies proprietary, geophysical technologies to rapidly evaluate underground geological targets and accelerate exploration programs targeting mineral and water resources. Ivanhoe Electric’s Typhoon™ data acquisition system is a world-leading, accurate and powerful, induced polarization and electromagnetic geophysical survey
technology, whose applications may be supplemented with advanced data processing by Computational Geosciences, an Ivanhoe Electric subsidiary.
In May 2023, Ivanhoe Electric announced the signing of a Definitive Agreement with Saudi Arabian Mining Company Ma’aden, which sets out the binding framework for a strategic investment of US$126.4 million by Ma’aden into the common stock of Ivanhoe Electric and the concurrent establishment of a 50/50 exploration joint venture in Saudi Arabia. Ivanhoe Electric will provide the Joint Venture with a royalty-free license to use Typhoon™ within Saudi Arabia for the purpose of mineral exploration. Ma’aden will make available approximately 48,500 km2 of land under exploration license or license application within Saudi Arabia for exploration by the Joint Venture.
In September 2016, Mr. Friedland was appointed board Co-Chairman of Sunrise Energy Metals (formerly Clean TeQ), an Australia-listed company providing innovative and sustainable solutions for metals recovery and water treatment. Sunrise Energy Metals is developing the Sunrise Project in the State of New South Wales, Australia, a multi-decade nickel-cobalt resource which also hosts one of the world’s largest and highest-grade sources of scandium. Nickel and cobalt sulphate from Sunrise will be supplied to the lithium-ion battery market; scandium oxide will be used to produce lighter and stronger aluminum alloys for aerospace and automotive markets.
Robert is also a major investor in a variety of deep tech investments, including Pure Lithium, a Boston- based lithium battery company. Pure Lithium is a product of the famous MIT professor Don Sadoway’s lab and is seeking to create lithium metal batteries for use in a wide variety of applications. Lithium metal batteries are the holy grail of energy storage and will replace today’s aging lithium-ion technology with a far superior product in efficacy and safety.
During the 1990s, Ivanhoe Capital became a founding investor in internet services pioneer Beijing Stone Rich Sight Information Technology, which merged with Sinanet.com in 1999 to form Sina.com which went on to launch Weibo, one of the most widely used social media platforms in China. Ivanhoe Capital also provided founding venture capital for U.S.-based Sirius Satellite Radio, which later completed a strategic merger and went on to build SiriusXM into the largest audio entertainment company in North America that has reported more than 33 million satellite and internet subscribers in 2024.
In an initial 2013 venture into the premium hospitality sector, a subsidiary of Mr. Friedland’s Ivanhoe Capital Corporation acquired the Villa TreVille luxury boutique hotel, overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea at Positano, on Italy’s historic Amalfi Coast. The former home of celebrated opera director and moviemaker Maestro Franco Zeffirelli provides 16 distinctive suites contained in four elegant residences on the two- hectare (five-acre), cliff-face site. Ivanhoe Capital is also developing boutique hotels in Asia.
Mr. Friedland entered the international film sector in 2013 when he co-founded Ivanhoe Pictures. In March 2017, Ivanhoe Pictures merged with Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, an independent U.S. film finance and production company, to form SK Global Entertainment, which pursues international film and television opportunities from its headquarters in Santa Monica, California. Mr. Friedland was an Executive Producer of Crazy Rich Asians, the movie released in mid-2018 that became the highest-grossing romantic comedy in the U.S. since 2009. He also was Executive Producer of The Wailing, a Korean-language thriller and the most-awarded Korean film of 2016.
In 1996, Mr. Friedland, then Co-Chairman of Diamond Fields Resources, was named Developer of the Year by the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) for his work in establishing and financing companies engaged in mineral exploration and development around the world – a recognition, in part, of his leadership role in the Voisey’s Bay story. Also in 1996, Albert Chislett and Chris Verbiski – the prospectors who made the landmark nickel discovery at Voisey’s Bay, on Canada’s East Coast, while conducting exploration for Diamond Fields Resources – shared the PDAC’s Bill Dennis Award for Prospector of the Year. Voisey’s Bay subsequently was developed into one of the world’s major nickel mines.
The Mongolian Government's Foreign Investment and Foreign Trade Agency recognized Mr. Friedland with consecutive Investor Envoy of the Year awards in 2003 and 2002. As Chairman of the original Ivanhoe Mines, he was making international media headlines telling the story of Ivanhoe’s South Gobi discoveries and encouraging investors and miners to participate in the further exploration and development of Mongolia’s largely untapped mineral trove.
In 2005, during a state ceremony in the national capital, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s Prime Minister presented Mr. Friedland with a national Certificate of Honour formally acclaiming Ivanhoe Mines as a “friend” of Mongolia’s, recognizing the company’s investment in a fully repaid treasury bill that helped enable the country’s historic repayment to Russia of its Soviet-era debt. In 2023, Robert was awarded the Order of the Polar Star, Mongolia’s highest state honor for a foreign citizen.
In 2009, the Northern Miner publishing group named Mr. Friedland one of Canada's Super Seven Dynamos with track records of turning junior companies into major success stories. The publishing group also named Mr. Friedland the 2006 Mining Person of the Year for his success in negotiating a strategic partnership with Rio Tinto to develop Ivanhoe Mines' Oyu Tolgoi Project in Mongolia, terming it "a defining moment in one of the world's biggest mineral-development success stories of the past decade". The award’s citation credited Mr. Friedland as "a dynamic force for a quarter-century in the minerals industry through a host of private and public-company vehicles".
Mr. Friedland received the Dealmaker of the Year Award for the original Ivanhoe Mines from Australia's Diggers and Dealers Mining Forum in August 2011, which acknowledged his success in "managing some of the more interesting asset development logistics our industry has seen for many years". The citation said the award recognized "the entrepreneurial skills of developing one of the world's major projects (Mongolia’s Oyu Tolgoi) while retaining corporate ownership, retaining focus on the end goal as well as unlocking value in ancillary corporate assets (in particular, subsidiary Ivanhoe Australia)".
In September 2012, Canada’s Financial Post Magazine placed Mr. Friedland on its honor roll of The Most Influential People in Canada, chosen by a panel of corporate contemporaries. Ranking Mr. Friedland among the "most valuable players" in Canadian mining, the magazine headlined him as The Doer, citing his "knack for hurdling seemingly insurmountable challenges to turn dreams into reality".
In March 2012, Mr. Friedland was recognized as Mining Personality of the Year at the inaugural Asia Mining Awards, sponsored by the Hong Kong-based Asia Mining Club and the Mines & Money conference. The award noted his role in Mongolia's emergence as a major destination for mining investment. Ivanhoe Mines' Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mining complex was voted Project Development of the Year.
In March 2013, Mr. Friedland received the Jury's Award at the Mines & Money Asia Mining Awards ceremony in Hong Kong – a unanimous choice recognizing his role in the 2012 initial public offering by
the former Ivanplats (rebranded as Ivanhoe Mines in 2013) that raised more than C$300 million for the company's projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa. In a related, prior acknowledgement of Ivanplats’ successful 2012 initial public offering, the company was voted recipient of the Exploration Funding Award as part of the Outstanding Achievement Awards presented at the London Mines & Money conference in December 2012.
In March 2015, the current Ivanhoe Mines’ exploration team of staff and consulting geologists – led by Dr. David Broughton and Thomas Rogers – received the Thayer Lindsley Award from the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) for what it judged to be the industry’s most significant International Discovery: The first of two major copper deposits to be found at the company’s Kamoa Project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now known as the Kamoa-Kakula Project, it is recognized as one the world’s 10 largest copper deposits. A decade earlier, in 2004, the PDAC’s inaugural Thayer Lindsley Award was presented to three senior geologists with the original Ivanhoe Mines – Douglas Kirwin, Charles Forster and Garamjav Dondog – who were credited with the discovery of the Hugo Dummett copper-gold deposit presently being developed for production as the underground, second phase of the Oyu Tolgoi Mine in Mongolia. Mr. Friedland presented the awards to the teams in 2015 and in 2004 on behalf of the PDAC.
In September 2016, the industry publication, Mining Journal, presented Mr. Friedland with its Lifetime Achievement Award during a Toronto conference for mining-industry interests in the Americas.
In January 2017, Ivanhoe Mines’ exploration geologists Sello Kekana and Dr. David Broughton were presented with the 2016 Colin Spence Award for excellence in global mineral exploration by the Association for Mineral Exploration, of British Columbia, Canada. The award recognized the geologists’ roles as principal members of the Ivanplats team that discovered and delineated the high-grade Flatreef – one of the world’s major deposits of platinum-group minerals – that is part of Ivanhoe’s Platreef mine development project in South Africa. Exploration at Platreef began in 2000; early discoveries culminated in the discovery of the tier-one Flatreef Deposit in 2010.
Ivanhoe link with Triple Crown of major mining announcements – June 14, 2018
False and misleading allegations by Bench Marks Foundation, May 27, 2016
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