Stan Bharti, Chairman and CEO of Forbes & Manhattan and Dozens of Other Companies

Stan knows when to invest and how to create wealth from emerging companies.

Stan Bharti is an entrepreneurial founder and leader of many mining, agricultural and energy companies. He has a strong technical background and a keen business sense. His experience has given him a very good understanding of what endeavors and companies are worth forming and developing

He believes in finding the best people to run his companies. He guides CEOs and Presidents but encourages them to run their businesses on their own and do their own thing. He doesn’t waste time on long formal meetings but is more spontaneous in his approach. His group has a strong comradery. Stan encourages all of his people to have fun while working, to have excellent results, to be successful and reap large financial rewards. He is a family man who has encouraged his three sons to work with him. He also feels a duty to give back to society and founded a charitable foundation dedicated to help humanity, wildlife and the environment.

Stan and his company Forbes & Manhattan, Inc. a Toronto-based private merchant bank and resource powerhouse were able to take advantage of the stock market sell off last year to strengthen their portfolio of companies. An authority in the global mining industry, F & M understands matters of international finance. They pinpoint assets of the highest caliber and take them from exploration and discovery to production. Forbes & Manhattan President and CEO Stan Bharti is Responsible for this unique vision. In a recent Leader’s Spotlight interview with MetalsNews, Bharti gave us insight into his very successful process for growing wealth through growing businesses.

The director of numerous public and private consortiums, Bharti has earned his reputation as a visionary with more than 25 years experience in mining, markets and finance. At the foundation of this experience is an advanced degree in Engineering from Moscow, Russia and the Royal School of Mines at University of London, England. From there, Bharti successfully held senior executive positions and went on to build his own company from the ground up. He purchased mines from floundering companies and progressed to establish a conglomerate that would define the essence of leadership in contemporary mining and finance.

“By the mid-nineties, I had cobbled it all together, rolled everything into a public company and from there built up a very good model, which is ‘we invest only in things we manage.’ By the beginning of 2000 I had the family private company merchant bank known today as Forbes & Manhattan.”

As a rule in their formula for cultivating resource companies, Forbes & Manhattan invests its own capital at the seed level. To usher this along, a top-notch management team is put in place to work the assets accordingly. “It’s not a quick flip by any means,” notes Bharti. “It’s a three to five year process. We don’t trade stock — we build assets. That’s what sets us apart from the pack of merchant bank organizations.”

Another remarkable feature of Forbes & Manhattan lies in its close-knit, in-house workforce. At the Toronto headquarters, the company retains approximately 100 professionals — geologists, lawyers, accountants, investment bankers, financial analysts, mining analysts — which afford its junior clients the dynamic support they deserve, as Bharti puts it. Forbes’ five main specialty divisions are gold and base metals mining, energy, wealth management, agriculture and ferrous metals.

Bharti’s school of thought is revolutionary. When it comes to the challenge of hiring the professionals he’s known for employing in order to maintain this level of diversity. “It doesn’t matter to me if there is no vacancy available on the staff. The advantage Forbes has over the competition is that when I find the right person, I hire him immediately, because good guys are hard to find.”

To Bharti, the point is organized chaos mediated through an atmosphere of individual pace setting. As a group, Forbes works very tightly, yet Bharti allows everyone his own personal leeway in matters of time and approach, “on the fly” as he puts it. “We don’t have a lot of meetings; everything is on the go. And thus, we get results. Who has more fun than we? Nobody!”

This philosophy has built Forbes & Manhattan into a very successful and well respected company. Forbes & Manhattan’s strength is ultimately revealed through its ability to locate undervalued, somewhat troubled assets, and unlock shareholder value by way of its core prescription of time, management, financial and technical expertise.

If Forbes is known for furnishing results, then its Desert Sun Mining, Consolidated Thompson Iron Mines, and First Uranium are this front runner’s premium success stories.

Originally established by Anglo-American in 1980, Desert Sun had already produced upwards of 700,000 ounces of gold by 2002 when Forbes stepped in. Through modernization and assertive exploration, Bharti and company ramped yearly production to 100,000 ounces, thus creating a 3,750% return in only four years. By April 2006, the Sun had been sold to Yamana Gold for $735 million.

Iron ore production is slated to commence the first quarter of next year at Consolidated Thompson. Here, Forbes has taken a $1 million market cap and expanded that figure to more than $1 billion, making that a 4,500% return in slightly more than four years time. In a tactical collaboration with Chinese super-giant Wuhan Iron & Steel Co., Forbes has amassed more than $800 million in equity.

With a 1,400% return in little more than 2 years and a market cap of C$1.5 billion, South Africa’s First Uranium was originally seed financed by Forbes at $0.86 per share. Concentrating on development and a spin-off deal with Simmers and Jack, Forbes eventually took the First Uranium to $7 IPO as expedited by RBC Capital Markets.

Stan Bharti at the San Francisco Hard Assets Investment Conference

He is surrounded by some of his exhibiting companies: Alexis Minerals, Avion Gold, Crocodile Gold, Sulliden and Crowflight.

The most recent confirmation of Forbes & Manhattan’s aptitude for excellence is demonstrated in Avion Resources and Crocodile Gold.

Founded last year from an initial purchase of Nevsun’s Tabakoto/Segala mine in Mali, West Africa for $20 million, Avion and its ace team reoriented the setup into a producer for 2009 with a 2.7 million ounce resource with more than $15 million in liquid cash. Next year Avion is projected to produce more than 100,000 ounces of gold, with the potential to double that figure in the very near future.

With a current market capitalization of $170 million and $55 million CAD raised thus far, Crocodile Gold has transpired into Forbes’ newest gold producer in the Australia’s Northern Territory.

Cultivating a distinct assortment of projects, the Bharti Charitable Foundation reflects Bharti’s core philosophy of the importance of nurturing and valuing humanity and habitat. The Bharti Charitable Foundation launched in 2007 with the goals of increasing public awareness toward animal preservation and education, improving economic and educational opportunities for youth around the globe and helping raise universal awareness about environmental issues. Spearheaded by Andre, Hannele, Rene and Julian Bharti, BCF is an exemplary model for what Stan knows as one of the keys to success.

In direct balance alongside technical competence, stellar interpretations of markets and self-sustained capital, “you have to have a good family,” Bharti confesses. “Otherwise, you cannot focus on business.”

For more information visit

http://www.forbesmanhattan.com

http://www.bharticharitablefoundation.com