Mosher: The Impact On Commodity Prices Will Be Horrific—Setting Up Potential Shortages

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I had the opportunity this week to connect with Don Mosher of B&D Capital Partners in Vancouver. For decades Don has helped finance the junior resource exploration market, and has been a key player in raising over $120 million in venture funds over the years.

It was an interesting conversation as Don has recently co-founded an organization representing Canada’s venture industry, called the Venture Funding Crisis Committee (VFCC), with the aim of “improving the ability of venture companies to finance their activities.”

According to Don, the ability to efficiently raise capital is becoming harder and harder in Canada due to excessive regulations. The ultimate destination he explained, may be an environment of horrifically higher commodity prices and potential shortages.

Starting with the evolution of Canadian resource exploration, Don explained that, ”Over the last 150 years…we’ve become globally acclaimed for resource exploration. Originally [exploration stocks] started out [trading] as a curb exchange, where businessmen were trading certificates and trying to convince each other to buy into start up exploration companies. [But] over the last 150 years it’s transformed into the most heavily regulated market in the world, with some of the most severe penalties of any market in the world.”

With respect to the importance of exploration finance, Don said, “Last year, over 70% of all money raised for exploration expenditures on a global basis was raised in Toronto…[and] on the venture exchange there was $6B raised. Of the $6B raised, $4B was raised with non-brokered financing’s…There is close to 1,300 companies on the exchange, [and about] 150k jobs in the exploration business. If those companies can’t get funding, the potential is to see 150k people lose their jobs, but in addition to that, the supporting cast of about another seven jobs supported by [each] exploration [job], will also be impacted. So we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs at potential risk here.”

An environment of tightening regulation, Don added, simply leads to industries moving overseas.“To mention a famous mine explorer, Robert Friedland, he thinks that the entire venture market is going to move to Hong Kong. What he’s pointing at is what happened to U.S. manufacturing. U.S. manufacturing went to a jurisdiction with less regulation, less costs, making it easier for them to do business…[so] the impact on Canada is going to be horrific.
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