Christopher Ecclestone: Mining Strategist

Christopher Ecclestone is a Principal and mining strategist at Hallgarten & Company and is based in London. Prior to founding Hallgarten & Company in 2003 he was the head of research at an economic thinktank in New Jersey which he had joined in 2001. Before moving to the U.S., he was the founder and head of research at the esteemed Argentine equity research firm, Buenos Aires Trust Company, from 1991 until 2001. Prior to his arrival in Argentina, he worked in London beginning in 1985 as a corporate finance and equities analyst and as a freelance consultant on the restructuring of the securities industry. Earlier, he worked for the Federal and State governments in Australia. He is a native of Melbourne, Australia. He graduated in 1981 from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

E-mail address: cecclestone@hallgartenco.com

Susana Sueldo de Ecclestone: Director, International & Government Relations

Susana Ecclestone is a Director of Hallgarten & Company, with a special focus on International relations and business development since 2005. She is also the Chief Executive Officer of Harrington Blue & Partners, specialists in promoting bilateral trade and relations between the UK/Europe and Latin America since 2023. She has been part of the working groups on corruption and inclusion and international trade at the B20 Arabia in 2020 and is part of the executive board at the Coalition of Green Chambers of Commerce promoting sustainable development projects across the globe. She is currently also involved in the All Party Parliamentary Group on International Trade and Exports working group promoting sustainable solutions and digitalization of international trade.

E-mail address: secclestone@hallgartenco.com

Melissa “Mel” Sanderson: Liaison – Government/Supranationals/Multilaterals

Mel Sanderson is an executive with 30 years of global experience in mining, business and government relations, and most notably the founder of Ethically Sustainable Growth (ESG+). She previously served as a senior diplomat, including as Charge d’Affaires leading the US Embassy in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),

In her over two decades of experience as a diplomat in the US Foreign Service, she worked on issues ranging from counter-terrorism to weapons of mass destruction.

For 14 years (2006-2020), she held senior positions at Freeport McMoran as Vice President for Africa, and the company’s primary liaison with Congolese national and provincial government officials and established the government relations office in Kinshasa, DRC. Then as the Director of International Affairs, she developed and executed an international strategic plan to merge public and government relations with sustainable development initiatives.

She has featured prominently in major media outlets (including the WSJ & the NY Times) discussing challenges in the critical minerals sector. Her insights span from China’s export restrictions on Gallium & Germanium to broader African relations.

She is a Professor of Practice (ESG, CSR, and Sustainability) at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona. She has previously served as Vice-President International at Freeport-McMoRan.

She is fluent in five languages.

Geoffrey Gates: Corporate Access

Geoffrey Gates has had a long career as an institutional sales executive on Wall Street with a focus, in recent decades, upon the mining space. He graduated from Princeton University. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, he started on Wall Street at the former Bache & Co. He has since worked for a number of firms, Allen & Co., Laidlaw & Company, Mitchum Jones, London & Bishopsgate, and Sanders Morris Harris. Most recently he was with Meredith Financial Group.

E-mail address: ggates@hallgartenco.com

Alexander Ecclestone: Research Assistant

Alex Ecclestone is a graduate in Economics from Oxford Brookes University. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he is bilingual in Spanish and English. He was educated in Argentina, the US and the UK and is now based in England.

E-mail address: aecclestone@hallgartenco.com

Valete:

Armen Kouyoumdjian: Latin Political Risk Analyst

Armen Kouyoumdjian worked with Hallgarten from 2003 until his tragic early death in late 2011. Born in Beirut, he graduated in 1970 from the Sorbonne in Paris where he read Applied Statistics. In 1971, he joined the European Research Department of Vickers da Costa & Co. Ltd, a London brokerage firm subsequently absorbed into Citicorp), and was promoted to European Research manager in 1974.

In November 1976, he moved to the International Mexican Bank, a London-established institution owned at that time by a number of Mexican and international banks (now totally absorbed into the Banamex-Accival /Citicorp Group), carrying out merchant banking operations in Central and South America. His responsibilities as Resident Economist and Assistant Managing Director included advising the bank on Country Risk and developing new business opportunities.

In February 1991, he moved to Chile. Since that time he has advised financial institutions, business corporations, and diplomatic missions on Chilean & Latin American Country Risk, the Business Environment and Financial Markets. He also writes for specialist business publications in several countries, and his first book, Perspectives Chili, in French, was published in Paris by Le Monde in June 2002.

From 1982 onwards, he was European Chairman of the Washington- based Association of Political Risk Analysts (APRA), and subsequently set-up its European successor in London (the Association for Political Risk Management), which was merged into the Society of Business Economists in 1991.

He was fluent in English, French and Spanish and also had a good working knowledge of spoken and written Arabic, and spoken Armenian. He was a member of London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, Britain’s Institute of Directors, the International Consulting Economists’ Association, and the Society of Latin American Studies. He was an Economic Adviser to the Chilean-Mexican Integration Chamber in Santiago and lectured on Latin America at Chile’s Catholic University and the Navy’s Maritime University.