Directors

Ian James Pringle, B.Sc. (Hons), Ph.D, Managing Director.

Dr. Pringle was appointed Managing Director of the Company on 23 September, 2005. He is a Sydney-based exploration geologist with over 22 years of specialist expertise in exploration for silver, gold, and copper within Australia and SE Asia. Ian gained a doctorate from the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1981 where he studied petrology, mineralogy and geochemistry of metamorphosed volcanic rocks and taught laboratory classes in economic geology. During his career, Ian has worked in mineral exploration programmes that have resulted in successful mineral discoveries;

in Northern Australia with Elf Aquitaine,

the Lerokis Au-Cu-Ag deposit, Indonesia with CSR Minerals,

the Girilambone copper deposit, NSW with Nord Resources, and

in Australia, the Philippines and Cyprus as Exploration Manager for Golden Shamrock Mines and Oxiana Ltd.

Ian coordinated due diligence studies on Sepon for Oxiana and supervised resource drilling of the main gold and copper deposits. Sepon is located in a recently discovered province of sediment-hosted epithermal gold deposits and supergene enriched copper mineralisation in central Laos. Ian’s recent and current work includes exploration and resource evaluation of the Bowdens Silver Deposit, near Mudgee, NSW, an epithermal-style mineralised system which contains over 80 million ounces of silver and which is owned by Silver Standard Resources Inc, one of the few publicly traded companies focused exclusively on the discovery and acquisition of silver-dominant projects. Ian is a director of Silver Standard Australia Pty. Ltd.