Robert Friedland

During the past 30 years of his career, Mr. Friedland has founded and led two prominent, international mining entities under the Ivanhoe Mines banner. He is Executive Co-Chairman and a director of Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., which has three major mine development projects and exploration underway in Southern Africa, including construction of three new mines, two of which are on world-scale mineral discoveries made by Ivanhoe Mines, in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The company operated under the Ivanplats name after its founding in 1998 and assumed the Ivanhoe Mines name in 2013. The original Ivanhoe Mines, founded in 1994 and now named Turquoise Hill Resources, had extensive mining and exploration interests in the Asia Pacific Region. Mr. Friedland was Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the original Ivanhoe Mines until 2012 and was also President from 2003 to 2008. He directed Ivanhoe Mines’ assembly of a portfolio of interests in several countries over 16 years and led the company’s team that made the discoveries and initial development of the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold-silver deposits in southern Mongolia. Rio Tinto acquired a controlling interest in the company in January 2012 and the company was renamed Turquoise Hill Resources in August 2012.  Rio Tinto completed its acquisition of Turquoise Hill in December 2022. Before founding Ivanhoe Mines, Mr. Friedland was a co-founding principal investor in Diamond Fields Resources in late 1992. Assuming Co-Chairmanship in 1994 after company-funded exploration discovered high-grade nickel at Voisey’s Bay in Canada, Mr. Friedland 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. Mr. Friedland is also Chairman and President of Ivanhoe Capital Corporation, his family’s private, Singapore-based company founded in 1987 that specialises in providing venture capital, project financing and related services for international business enterprises, predominantly in the minerals, energy and communications technologies sectors. He was inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in 2016 and the American Mining Hall of Fame in 2021.