More often than not, good ideas require some massaging and guidance before they can get off the ground.
But what happens when your good idea is underground?
The team at Manning Elliott turns those good ideas into great ones via experts who specialize in project management, auditing and accounting, and navigating ever-changing regulatory environments.
Manning Elliott partner Artem Valeev works predominantly with B.C.-based, junior mining companies that are searching for gold, silver and lithium, among other commodities. By and large, these are firms working in the exploratory phase: examining soil and investigating what’s underneath that soil to determine the feasibility of construction and eventually, commercial production.
At its core, Valeev’s expertise helps with company audits and ensuring investors are protected.
And it’s this early stage of exploring what lies underground that Valeev guides clients through three main pain points.
Securing upfront investments
Market volatility, a turbulent economy and constant inflationary pressures are everyday challenges facing Valeev’s clients, such that finding start-up capital is proving far more difficult than in years past.
“We tell the clients to identify areas that they can really cut down on costs, while trying to preserve the assets that they have,” Valeev says. “Beyond that, we use our extensive network to introduce our clients to people in capital markets who can perhaps help them identify the right investors who might be interested in the assets that they are trying to develop.”
Maintaining rigorous regulatory requirements as a public company
From reporting requirements to maintaining prudent internal controls within a business, the bar that is expected from a public company keeps increasing.
Valeev assists his clients with tax compliance laws and other implications related to major acquisitions, flow-through private placement shares and other filing requirements with the Canada Revenue Agency.
“For some of these junior mining companies, their finance department may be quite thin, so it’s a struggle for some of them to maintain adequate reporting standards and internal controls within the company,” Valeev says. “That’s where we come in. We provide our clients with advice on how to achieve compliance with reporting standards and enhance internal controls. We also offer competitive pricing for auditing services."
Navigating ever-changing environmental, social, and governance regulations
In years past, commodity prices were the number one issue affecting the mining industry – now those concerns centre around environmental, social, and governance (ESG) regulations and reporting.
For junior firms, this regulatory landscape can prevent accessing seed money, while increasing costs and adding levels of complexity to the reporting process. For those companies with limited managerial or technical capacity, Valeev can step in and help make sense of the numbers and the rules around reporting.
That’s due in large part to the fact Valeev is part of a team at Manning Elliott where forecasting the future of ESG is an essential, day-to-day aspect of the job. Alongside his co-workers, Valeev attends industry information sessions and mining conferences to get face time with executives from some of the largest mining firms on the continent, allowing him to then pass along real-time information to his clients.
“ESG is a very hot topic nowadays,” Valeev says. “It’s still fairly early in the process but we have a lot of clients asking questions about where it’s heading and what it will look like, so it’s our job to stay on top of that.”
