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
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