David R. Hammond
David Hammond is a geologist, engineer and mineral economist with over 45 years of experience in the natural resource industries. He has been involved at one time or another with almost every energy and mineral commodity, including coal, uranium, base and precious metals, iron ore, oil & gas and most of the industrial minerals. In the course of his career he has held positions in exploration, engineering, financial analysis, marketing, planning, and business development, involving a wide range of staff and management responsibilities with Anaconda Minerals, ARCO Coal, Shell Oil and General Electric's Ladd Petroleum affiliate. In the early 1990s he began a geological and mineral economics consulting practice, focusing on mineral asset valuation and appraisal, feasibility studies, due diligence investigations, risk analysis, and commodity market research. His clients included many of the major and mid-tier natural resource companies and involved projects throughout the world.
In 1997 David brought his resources consulting practice into the Global Energy & Mining Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers. There he was involved with independent assessment team determinations for regulatory agencies and financial institutions, strategic studies for private and public resource companies, support of the audit and tax service lines, and business development. David returned to his independent consulting practice in 2000, and additionally served as a full-time member of the finance faculty for the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business during 2001-2002 and 2004-2005. In 2004 he joined International Royalty Corporation, serving as interim CFO during the firm’s 2005 IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange. He later assumed the position of Vice President, Strategic Planning until 2010 when IRC was acquired by Royal Gold Company for $700 million in cash and shares. David returned to management consulting and academic activities at the close of this transaction.
David holds Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in geological engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology and the University of Utah respectively, as well as an MBA in energy finance from the University of Denver. His Ph.D. is in mineral economics from the Colorado School of Mines, where his doctoral dissertation, Reserve Changes at U.S. Producing Gold Mines, 1965-1996, represented a comprehensive examination of the growth and stochastic processes by which the ultimately extracted ore reserves change over the life of an active mine. His doctoral program also involved extensive work in modern financial theory including real option approaches for mineral valuation, and focused on the practical issues and problems associated with traditional valuation methods, such as net present value analysis and discount rate determination.
He is a member of the Society of Mining Engineers, the Mineral Economics and Management Society, and a past Director and Executive Committee Officer of the Western Coal Council, predecessor organization of the American Coal Council. David has conducted many seminars/workshops and been a frequent speaker at industry conferences on mineral valuation, due diligence practice, energy and mineral commodity markets, discount rate issues, and reserve uncertainty. Since 2005 he has served as a Program Evaluator for geological engineering programs under ABET, and in 2012 was appointed to a five-year term as a Commissioner on the Engineering Accreditation Commission representing SME. He also is a member of the Industrial Advisory Board for the Department of Geology & Geological Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, and the Advisory Council for the J. P. Morgan Center for Commodities at the University of Colorado Denver Business School. David has undergraduate and graduate teaching relationships with the University of Arizona, the South Dakota School of Mines and the University of Colorado Denver Business School. In 2016 he was recipient of American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) Mineral Economics Award for his outstanding professional accomplishments and distinguished contributions to the field of mineral economics.
David's military service was as an engineer officer with the U.S. Army 1971-1973, where he was assigned to heavy construction and quarry units based in the United States and Republic of South Vietnam. He received the Bronze Star for Meritorious Service in Vietnam and the Army Commendation Medal. David currently resides in Highlands Ranch, Colorado with his wife Diane, a retired telecommunications industry executive.