Robert Martin Friedland is an international financier

Financier

Financier is a term for a person who handles typically large sums of money, usually involving money lending, financing projects, large-scale investing, or large-scale money management. The term is French, and derives from finance or payment...

 and businessman. Since the early 1980s, he has specialized in securing funding for the exploration and development of mineral and energy resources and advanced technology ventures. He is the founder and Chairman of his private, family-owned firm, Ivanhoe Capital Corporation, which is active in global capital markets and has an established focus on emerging markets.

Early life and education

Born in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, USA, on August 18, 1950, to immigrant parents Ilona and Albert Friedland, Robert is the eldest of three children. He graduated in 1974 from Reed College

Reed College

Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...

, Oregon, USA, with a political science degree. He holds dual US and Canadian citizenships and is also a resident of Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

. He and his wife Darlene are parents to three children.

Friedland spent his early life running the All One Farm, a hippy commune

Commune

Commune may refer to:In society:* Commune, a human community in which resources are shared* Commune , a township or municipality* One of the Communes of France* An Italian Comune...

 in Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

. Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson is a writer and biographer. He is the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. He has been the Chairman and CEO of CNN and the Managing Editor of TIME...

's biography of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...

, which characterizes Friedland as a cult leader, says:

(Jobs) said that that when Friedland was in trouble because of environmental damage caused by some of his mines, he had tried to contact Jobs to intervene with Bill Clinton, but Jobs had not responded. "Robert always portrayed himself as a spiritual person, but he crossed the line from being charismatic to being a con man."

Career

Friedland operates Ivanhoe Capital from its corporate headquarters in Singapore – a location that has facilitated his predominant business focus on the Asia Pacific region during the past 20 years.

Friedland is Chief Executive Officer of Canada-based Ivanhoe Mines

Ivanhoe Mines

Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. is a Canadian mineral exploration and development company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Its focus is on the pacific rim where it is in the process of developing several large mines, the principal one being the Oyu Tolgoi Project in Southern Mongolia 200 km...

 Ltd. (IVN: TSX, NYSE & NASDAQ), which he founded in 1994 and led to a successful initial public offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange

Toronto Stock Exchange

Toronto Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in Canada, the third largest in North America and the seventh largest in the world by market capitalisation. Based in Canada's largest city, Toronto, it is owned by and operated as a subsidiary of the TMX Group for the trading of senior equities...

 in 1996. He served as Chairman, and later as Executive Chairman, until 2011. Exploration by Ivanhoe Mines since 2000 has discovered a chain of copper, gold and silver deposits at Oyu Tolgoi (Turquoise Hill) in Mongolia’s South Gobi region. The first phase of what is independently projected to be one of the world’s largest porphyry copper and gold mines is under construction at Oyu Tolgoi and is expected to begin commercial production in 2013. Ivanhoe Mines also has substantial interests in SouthGobi Resources, Ivanhoe Australia and Altynalmas Gold.

Friedland was chairman of Galactic Resources which operated Summitville mine

Summitville mine

The Summitville mine was a gold mining site in Rio Grande County, Colorado south of Del Norte. It is remembered for the environmental damage caused in the 1980s by the accidental leakage of mining by-products into local waterways and then the Alamosa River....

, the site of the United States' worst cyanide release and mine bankruptcy and Superfund

Superfund

Superfund is the common name for the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 , a United States federal law designed to clean up sites contaminated with hazardous substances...

 site. This mine closed in 1990 but continues to affect the region. It is estimated that at least $120 million will be required to clean up the bankrupt Galactic Resources mining site, which has damaged 17 miles of river. The former environmental manager of the facility has been indicted for intentionally dumping lead and cyanide directly into streams.

Copper mines operated by Ivanhoe in Myanmar

Myanmar

Burma , officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar , is a country in Southeast Asia. Burma is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southwest, and the Andaman Sea on the south....

have recently come under scrutiny as environmental degradation, illicit company practices, as well as inside dealings with the ruling military junta have created ethical concerns.

Friedland's other corporate leadership positions have included:

• Co-Founder, Executive Co-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Ivanhoe Energy Inc. (IE: TSX & IVAN: NASDAQ).
• Chairman of Sunwing Holding Corporation.
• Executive Chairman of Ivanplats Limited.
• Chairman and Non-Executive Director of Ivanhoe Australia Ltd. (IVA: ASX & TSX).
• Chairman, Potash One Inc.
• Co-Chairman of Diamond Fields Resources Ltd.
• Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Galactic Resources Ltd.