The driving force behind Africa’s biggest gold find last year is just not what you expect. Floppy-haired, incorrigible and puppy-like, Dan Betts is a posh Brummie who seems barely anything a global miner should be. “I suppose I was lucky I had the family business behind me,” he grins. “I didn’t pay myself a salary for the first three years — the family supported me. That gave me the freedom to go for it.”
The Betts family has been selling precious metals from a Birmingham base for 252 years, so perhaps it’s not so odd finding a scion digging for gold in war-torn west Africa.
But the how and why is still surprising, especially as fresh-faced Betts, a former Accenture management consultant, is only 36.
His business, Hummingbird Resources, was floated on the Alternative Investment Market in 2010 to raise money for its gold prospecting after Dan’s father was offered options on unexplored jungle by the Liberian government. The fact that it has hit it big — finding 3.8m ounces of gold worth nearly £4 billion, at the latest count — seems the stuff of a Boy’s Own yarn.
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Now Dan and dad face the prospect of becoming considerably wealthier — if everything falls into place. But there are a lot of ifs, not least the continuing stability of Liberia, which has seen decades of civil war. And if Hummingbird, set up only in 2005, can build a working gold mine in a country that has never built such mines before.
And if Betts, a likable enthusiast with no mining experience, has the nous to pull it off. He thinks he has. That may be because, as he cheerily admits, ignorance is bliss.
No way would anyone rational spend tens of millions in a difficult environment with no return for many years “If I had known all the challenges involved, I wouldn’t have done it. No way would anyone rational set up a business to spend tens of millions in a difficult environment with no return for many years. I just thought it was a great adventure.”
He is sitting in a tiny meeting room at Betts Metal Sales, his father’s firm, in Hockley, Birmingham’s jewellery district. Outside, diamond shops and wholesalers line the streets. Inside, a table is stacked with gold bars — “Fake, I’m afraid,” chuckles Betts.
The real bars, worth £100,000 each, lie in a vault down a corridor, along with £1,000 gold coins, gold casting grains and more — all part of the family firm’s inventory. Portraits of Betts’s ancestors hang in reception. It seems a long way from Liberia, whose former president, Charles Taylor, was last week sentenced to 50 years in jail for war crimes.
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The current president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, winner of the 2011 Nobel peace prize, is trying to rebuild a fractured economy with unemployment topping 85%. Finds like Hummingbird’s offer the prospect of much-needed wealth and jobs.
“If we build this mine it will employ 2,000 people and transform the region, and probably put $1billion into the coffers of the government,” says Betts.
And for Hummingbird? “It’s a one-off opportunity to be the first mover in the last corner of one of the world’s great gold provinces.”
How the Brummies got their gold when Liberia is already home to giants such as BHP Billiton, which mines iron ore there, is another surprise. The answer is that big companies often let smaller explorers do the legwork and buy in later if their prospects seem sound.
Betts, however, is determined to see this through. “It’s absolutely my ambition to build a gold mine, but it’s not really about us, it’s a listed business.”
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Hummingbird’s investors, who include JP Morgan and Blackrock, will certainly want Betts to push up the share price, down 57p on its 167p launch price. That reflects a slide in natural resources values but also concern at just how mineable its gold find is.
Betts snorts. “To be honest, I think we’re unbelievably cheap. There is a time lag between perception and reality and nobody has really managed to get their heads around the fact that this is a mine, not an exploration play.”
He argues bullishly that his firm’s true worth is £350m, not £60m, and points to the experience around him. Ian Cockerill, Hummingbird’s chairman, is a former chief executive of Gold Fields, the South African mining group. Matthew Idiens, co-founder and non-executive director, is a long-standing natural resources investor.
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Idiens says it’s important not to mistake Betts’s enthusiasm for naivety. “He has an entrepreneur’s pig-headedness to go in at ground level and break down obstacles. So long as we continue to deliver operationally, the share price will take care of itself.”
But the Betts family firm — current turnover £20m — operates downstream of the mining sector, selling prefabricated bullion products and dental alloys, and recycling silver waste. It is run by Betts’s 62-year-old father Stephen, who consolidated ownership into the Stephen Betts Group two decades ago. Where’s the mining experience there?
“We have traded gold with Liberia before,” says Betts. “And my father had an investment in an exploration firm that had rights to explore in Liberia under the UN-monitored government post-Taylor.”
That link paid off when Betts senior sold out of the firm and the minister of lands and mines promptly offered him options on more territory. Hoping to diversify away from jewellery, he asked his son to investigate.
“Just lines on the map, no roads or data or anything,” says Betts. “I thought we’d sell it on to an exploration company, make a quick turn. I phoned 100 firms in London and Toronto and they laughed at me.”
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So he went to Liberia, hired a Jeep and a mining consultant and set off into the jungle, where he uncovered large, low-grade gold deposits. As easy as that? Not quite, grins Betts, citing five years of angry crocodiles, guesthouse brothels, machete-wielding teens and “pepper soup” — rice with crushed fish bones — before Hummingbird floated.
More seriously, he says, building anything in Liberia involves complex politics at national and local level — one of the reasons many firms are put off. But mining logic was on his side. The Hummingbird find is in an unexplored part of the Birimian craton, a geological area known to contain gold. Betts is off his seat now, laying out geological maps, showing me he knows his stuff.
He still seems impossibly young for such a venture, blond and too eager to please, with not a trace of Birmingham in his accent, despite his plea that he is “a Brummie through and through”. It was probably drilled out of him at Shrewsbury boarding school. The second of three brothers, he worked first for Accenture, advising the Inland Revenue in Newcastle, before joining his father’s firm. His younger brother also works as a director, the elder is in IT in London.
Stephen Betts concedes wryly that Hummingbird is a good use of his filial resources, especially as Dan always wanted more than a desk job. “He is amazing. The conditions out there are extreme.” And the team he has put together to explore the territory is formidable.
Father and son both emphasise that the Betts family, which retains 10% of Hummingbird, wants to help Liberia too. Hence the roads, bridges and clinics the business has built, and the environmental charity it has set up.
But, come on, isn’t that to offset inevitable criticism of mining’s impact on virgin Liberian rainforest? Dan Betts shakes his head.
“It is a sensitive issue. If you are going to make changes of any sort, you are going to cut down trees, but the footprint is minute compared with palm oil or rubber plantations. And the government wants us to get the mine built, so it is up to us to do it in the right way, to the best possible standards.”
Worries remain, however. Hummingbird has poured good news on the market — its gold finds are independently verified — lifting its estimates this year, yet the share price is still low. Raising the £100m it may need to build its mine could be a slog.
And experts say Betts, an adventurer at heart, will also have to change as his role becomes more corporate.
“There’s so much bullshit among explorers but people invest in his business because they invest in him; he’s so honest,” says one mining analyst. “If there is a problem, it’s that he wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s Dan Dare.”
Vital statistics
Born: September 8, 1975
Marital status: single
School: Shrewsbury
University: Nottingham
First job: consultant at Accenture
Pay: £130,000. His family owns 10% of Hummingbird and 100% of Stephen Betts Group
Homes: Birmingham and Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire
Car: green Range Rover
Favourite book: Jungle Man: the autobiography of Major PJ Pretorius
Favourite film: Out of Africa
Favourite music: U2
Favourite gadget: Loomis Stinger fishing rod
Last holiday: Indonesia
Working day
The Hummingbird Resources chief executive wakes at his home in Edgbaston, Birmingham, at 7am. “I am in the office by 8.45, going to the gym on the way,” says Dan Betts.
He works two days a week at the headquarters of the family’s gold and metals business in Birmingham’s Hockley district. The rest of the week he stays at his girlfriend’s home in Notting Hill, London, and works from Hummingbird’s Mayfair office. “In London, I’m meeting people: marketing, investment, other mining firms, technical support. In Birmingham, I get up to date with real work, directing operations.”
He visits Liberia regularly, and travels worldwide to promote the company. “I spread the word. The broader the audience, the more robust your market performance will be.”
Downtime
“After a day in the office, I’m like a dog that needs a run,” says Betts. He plays squash and golf, loves to ski, and fishes and shoots as well.
He spends any spare money on travelling. “I’ve always loved going to interesting places — it’s why I was comfortable building the business in Liberia.”