Presenters

Professor Dennis Buchanan, Course Director Emeritus Professor of Mining Geology, Royal School of Mines, Imperial College London

Professor Buchanan works jointly between the Department of Earth Science and Engineering and the Business School at Imperial College London, and will act as the Course Director. His current research interest lies in addressing the underlying technical principles applying to mineral projects and demonstrating how these influence financial modelling.

He was founder and Chairman of the Imperial College London start-up company, IC-FinEval Ltd, which provided financial evaluation, risk assessment and decision making software. He has 31 years experience teaching mining geology, mineral exploration and mineral project appraisal, and is responsible for the MSc in Metals and Energy Finance. This is a  joint degree between the Department of Earth Science and Engineering and the Business School at Imperial College London.

Professor Buchanan has worked as a Mining Geologist in both gold and platinum mines in South Africa and has wide experience as a consultant to industry, as an expert witness, and in designing and delivering short courses for industry.

Steve Davey, Director Protorisk
Protorisk is a commodity price risk management company. Protorisk works with banks to create and develop in-house commodity derivative capabilities; and producers to design and implement  hedging programmes. Steve's background includes 9 years of commodities derivatives structuring at Standard Bank where he worked on Precious Metal, Base Metal and Oil projects. More recently he spent 3 years at Liberty Life where he was responsible for pricing, analysing and designing an effective hedging programme for the market risks in Liberty's extremely long dated,  complex embedded derivative book.

Mike Herbst, Partner, Ernst & Young
Mike Herbst joined Ernst and Young in 1995, and has worked with clients in the mining and support industries. Since 1997, he has focused his client portfolio on mining and currently is audit partner for a number of mining companies.  He is also a member of the Ernst & Young Global discussion group on the application of International Financial Reporting Standards in the Mining Industry.

Douglas Taylor, Lecturer in Finance and Managerial Accounting, Wits Business School
Douglas Taylor has recently been appointed onto the academic staff of the WBS. He is a Chartered Accountant by profession, with an MBA from WBS. He has been a banker, academic and stock market analyst. He has run his own investor relations company for the past seven years, at the same time teaching finance and management accounting on the MBA and related courses for a number of South African business schools.  His current research interests include financial communications, the ethics of director remuneration, company perceptions, corporate image and identity and their underlying origins.

Akhilesh Kulkarni, Senior Manager: Transaction Advisory Services, Ernst & Young 
Akhilesh is an Engineering graduate and has done MBA in finance.
Akhilesh is a specialist valuation practitioner within Ernst & Young's Corporate Finance team. He has worked in India and is currently based out of the Johannesburg office. He has extensive experience in quantitative finance, company and asset valuations, financial modelling and merger and acquisition engagements. He has conducted valuation and financial modelling training for internal EY teams as well as clients.

Schedule