From overpriced acquisitions to poorly timed divestments, companies have eroded shareholder value or triggered reputational fallout by misjudging the real worth – or risk – of an asset.
That’s where independent, technically grounded corporate advisory becomes critical.
SRK Consulting is stepping into this space with deep geological insight and boardroom-level strategy — helping mining companies make smarter, data-backed decisions.
Mining.com’s Devan Murugan sat down with Matthew Hastings, Principal Geologist and Corporate Advisory Consultant at SRK Denver, to hear how his team helps miners avoid costly mistakes.
Devan Murugan: SRK is best known for known for its multi-disciplinary expert teams and technical reporting – but what does your corporate advisory team actually do that’s different from traditional consulting?
Matthew Hastings: We do our best to leverage that deep technical expertise that we do have in-house and marry that with being able to communicate things at an executive level. And that’s not something that’s always easily found in the mining industry. You have plenty of excellent competent technical experts, but being able to distill complexity into a consumable executive level of communications is challenging. We are doing our best to leverage that and be able to sell that as a service.
In an industry as capital-intensive and high-risk as mining, the cost of a wrong turn – be it in project sequencing, permitting risk, geological assumptions, or capital deployment – is measured in billions of dollars and years of time. So with those as the stakes, even world-class teams benefit from a second set of eyes – particularly when those eyes belong to professionals who’ve helped guide many mining companies or investors through similar inflection points over more than half a century.
A strong independent consultant partnership in corporate resource strategy can enhance disclosure quality and bolster confidence with investors/board, especially during critical mine development stages or portfolio augmentation. Our involvement is often seen as a quality signal, increasing institutional trust in the underlying technical narrative.
DM: We’ve seen mining companies overpay for assets, or sell too soon. How does SRK help boards and executives avoid those strategic missteps?
MH: Players in the industry will tend to spend money when the market is hot and conserve when it is down, although the best deals don’t necessarily follow those trends. Companies can get stuck in a very myopic view of what their strategy needs to be and not necessarily be willing to change that based on market conditions. They make decisions in M&A or actual internal project development that maybe aren’t going to be a good fit for what the market’s currently doing.
Sometimes these companies know their business very well but don’t necessarily know everybody else’s business. SRK has that depth and breadth to see what a lot of others are doing and understand the bigger picture. Within the bounds of confidentiality, we can advise our clients and share what has worked, what has not worked, and provide an independent view of things as they are.
DM: Can you walk us through how SRK assesses whether an asset is truly aligned with a company’s long-term goals – beyond just the numbers?
MH: That really starts with understanding who the client is. In my experience just over the last few years, there are many companies, not just mining companies, who depend on or have significant interest in the resources sector, either at the asset level or the enterprise level.
They often find themselves having to deal with critical decisions that need to be made from everything from a global portfolio view to a relatively minor asset budgeting level. And they’re dealing in some cases with partners or other groups who may have more knowledge and expertise in the space. They may not have mining as a core competency. Their partners may have a vested interest in a different outcome. They may not be getting all the information they need to fit with their business.
So we need to be able to distill complexity that may exist in the resources sector, the risk, that capital intensity that may be hard for others to understand, , bring that back to them and help integrate that with their corporate strategy or decision-making process.
DM: That doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s a deficit within that company when it comes to analyzing these things, does it?
MH: A decision to bring in independent corporate advisors tends to be a sign of strategic discipline and maturity. Athletes, even elite athletes all have coaches. They know how to go play the game, but everybody needs help sometimes.
In this case, it’s really getting that independent view of what the asset can and cannot be.
Internal teams can develop blind spots, especially when legacy thinking, political interests, perceived permitting/social constraints, or sunk cost fallacies dominate decision-making.
The worst case is you challenge your assumptions and you find out that they’re right. That you’ve spent the money and you’re still on the same page going the same direction as you were, with a bit more confidence. Best case, you find out you need to shift, you need to pivot away from a direction you are going which would’ve resulted in less value to shareholders or more risk to the project. And sometimes that outside technical expertise can be the challenge that knocks that loose in a decision-making process.
DM: How does your team bring ESG risk — often hidden or overlooked — into the decision-making process for M&A or capital planning?
MH: ESG risk is not novel in the mining industry. We’ve been exposed to it and have dealt with it for a long time, but it is certainly a focus currently in how things are being looked at. From my perspective, it’s using ESG risk as a way to weight decisions that are being made. The real risk in environmental, social , or governmental interactions in the mining industry can sometimes get moved to the back burner. It needs to be right up front.
You can have corporate communications processes. You can have investment-driving processes. You can just have outright misunderstanding of what those risks are. So bringing ESG into an appropriate level within a risk-based decision-making process is key, in my opinion. It’s not something you bolt on to the end.
DM: You work across many jurisdictions. How does SRK’s global footprint, and technical depth, give your clients a competitive edge in strategy?
MH: If we go back to ESG, for example, it’s key that you have local expertise familiar with the situation on the ground from an environmental permitting/social standpoint. It’s a good example of why that global footprint matters.
Having that global bench to rely on and being able to apply that expertise is helpful for disciplines beyond ESG. As we get into the technical aspects of projects, SRK has such a broad presence across a number of technical disciplines that it’s hard to find another independent company that has 50-plus years of history and 1,300-plus people globally who can step in on any problem that needs to be solved. I am always impressed when I ask around and find that we do have someone somewhere who is an expert in the weird and wonderful engineering or science I am trying to find.
DM: Matt, thanks very much indeed for talking to us.
The preceding joint venture is PROMOTED CONTENT sponsored by SRK and produced in co-operation with The Northern Miner. Visit. www.srk.com for more information.