1

Gowling’s Partner on the return of excitement in the mining sector

written by InvestorNews | March 28, 2018

March 28, 2018 – “My practice is corporate finance securities, M&A. I work with all kinds of companies helping them raise money, go public.” states Jason Saltzman, Partner at Gowling WLG, in an interview with InvestorIntel’s Peter Clausi.

Peter Clausi: Gowlings is a law firm. It used to be Gowlings Lafleur Henderson. Now the formal name is? 

Jason Saltzman: Gowling WLG. Gowling WLG Canada is the Canadian version, but we are now a global law firm.

Peter Clausi: How many lawyers do you have globally? 

Jason Saltzman: 1,400 give or take.

Peter Clausi: I bet you are covering all sectors.

Jason Saltzman: Covering all sectors.

Peter Clausi: You had a big Russia office at one point.

Jason Saltzman: We still do. The roots of the Gowling law firm go way back to IP and Russia and that office is still thriving.

Peter Clausi: Wow. Good. What is your practice like?

Jason Saltzman: My practice is corporate finance securities, M&A. I work with all kinds of companies helping them raise money, go public.

Peter Clausi: Any one sector or across the board?

Jason Saltzman: Doing a lot in mining, doing a lot in cannabis, a lot in cryptocurrencies these days and alternative finance, but just a general securities practice. In Canada, mining is obviously a big part of that.

Peter Clausi: Were you bored out of your mind between 2013 and 2015?

Jason Saltzman: That is when we started getting into some of the exciting stuff in the Fintech space, but definitely we like the more robust markets that we have today.

Peter Clausi: Do you think a lot of the risk capital went into those projects during the nuclear winter of mining finance and has not come back yet?

Jason Saltzman: It is starting to come back. Certainly those projects are still quite popular with investors, but we are definitely seeing more excitement in the mining sector.

Peter Clausi: Are you on the board of anything these days?

Jason Saltzman: No not in the mining sector.

Peter Clausi: In anything?

Jason Saltzman: Yeah, I am on the board of a couple of crypto companies.

Peter Clausi: We had talked about a marijuana project a couple of years ago.

Jason Saltzman: Yeah.

Peter Clausi: Did that work through?

Jason Saltzman: Yeah. I am doing lots of work in the marijuana space. Have a company that is going public. They just raised $30 million dollars in a brokered financing and the public transaction will be finished at the end of this month.

Peter Clausi: Do you find that the cost of compliance is getting too high within the mining sector?

Jason Saltzman: Yeah certainly. I mean it is not easy to be a public company these days in any sector, but particularly in mining with the extra reports and whatnot that are required. For a small company it is very taxing on their resources both in terms of financial resources and just time and bandwidth…to access the complete interview, click here