Leadership Team
The Meridian Board provides leadership to the Company and is responsible for its long term success. The Board currently comprises the Chairman, one Executive Director, one Lead Independent Director, and three Independent Directors.
Gilbert Clark
Executive Chairman, Director
Gilbert Clark has 20 years of international experience within the natural resources industry. Mr. Clark was formerly a Partner with Sentient Equity Partners. Prior to this he was a Senior Investment Advisor and Director of Sentient Asset Management Canada for The Sentient Group. His portfolio covered base and precious metals with investee companies in Europe, Greenland and South America. Prior to joining the Private Equity Industry he managed the international expansion for Queensland Gas Corporation (subsequently BG Group) for non-conventional oil and gas developments. Mr Clark has resource development and production experience from the Eastern Gold Fields of Western Australia. He has natural resource business experience in continental Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, Central America, South America, Africa, S.E. Asia, Greenland and Australia. Mr Clark holds a Bachelor of Science (Geology) from Macquarie University.
Adrian McArthur
Chief Executive Officer and Director
Adrian has over 20 years of experience in exploration, resource delineation and project generation roles for industrial minerals, gold and base metals. He currently leads a team of 13 geologists in a multi-commodity exploration program for Meridian which has confirmed a new style of hydrothermal manganese mineralization and identified a number of emerging gold and tin targets. Adrian holds a B.S.c. Hons, PhD from Monash is a fellow of AusIMM and is the qualified person for Meridian.
Charles Riopel
Lead Independent Director
M. Riopel is an accomplished senior-level executive with over 25 years domestic and international investment experience in mining. He has managed over the year’s both private and public investment funds. He is the founder and managing partner at Latitude 450, a private equity fund specialized in mining. Prior thereto, he was Senior Investment Director at The Sentient Group, one of the largest PE Funds in mining with over US$2.7 billion under management. He served as Senior Investment Director Metals & Mining at the SGF from 2006 to 2012. He was appointed to the Board of Directors of Meridian Mining SE in June 2018. He is also a board member of Aligo Innovation, North American Nickel, Premium Nickel Resources and the Foundation of Greater Montreal. He has served as a director and/or officer of several Canadian and international companies. He holds a Bachelor of Economics from Montreal University and a Masters in Business Administration from Laval University.
John Skinner
Independent Director
Mr John Skinner is Vancouver based and has had a long career in the Vancouver investment industry having worked as a Senior Investment Advisor/ Partner at Yorkton Securities 1983-1998 and Canaccord Capital 2000-2009. With a focus primarily on mining, John helped build, finance and advise a significant number of successful ventures. In 2004 John and his wife Trish founded Painted Rock Estate Winery building the business from the ground up. When their first vintage was released, he retired from the investment industry. Painted Rock has twice been named the InterVin International Winery of the Year and has gained considerable international profile. John remains an active investor in the resource industry and has been a strong supporter of Meridian since July 2020.
Mark Thompson
Independent Director
Mr. Mark Thompson is London based with over 26 years of experience in financial markets, physical and commodity derivatives trading, minerals exploration and mine development. He has held senior roles within banking, private equity and hedge fund businesses and has founded and sat on the boards of several junior mining companies in executive and non-executive roles. He consults widely within the metal derivatives industry, while recently he has been a driver behind the success of the private resource company Tungsten West Limited where he is Executive Chairman. Mark holds a B.A. in Physics from Oxford University and has been a strong supporter of Meridian since July 2020.
Susanne H. Sesselmann
Independent Director
Ms. Sesselmann is Munich based and has 20 years of international experience in banking with HVB Group (Unicredit), ten of which were in investment banking and project finance throughout the world but principally in Europe. Since 2003 she specialized in private equity funds and founded her own company in 2006. She was appointed an Independent Director to the Board of the Meridiam Infrastructure Funds Group in France and the US, developing, managing and financing infrastructure projects. Then she also served as a Board Director of natural resources funds group, The Sentient Group, and various Sentient group companies, and of Marengo Mining Limited, a junior copper exploration company in Papua New Guinea. Susanne has been lecturing at universities in Paris and in Linz for many years. She holds a Master’s degree in Languages from the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
