Don’t worry darling
Oh baby don’t you fret
We’re living in the future and
None of this has happened yet
By Thom Calandra at TickerTrax.com
But it will. Or it might. Maybe it even has.
This article is about the boss. Not The Boss that we all saw the other evening in his East Street Band’s opening show of the 2009 Tour.
No, this is the other boss. The one who juggles companies, commodities and conferences like … well, like Bruce when he’s flinging one of his 250-plus
songs in and out of a concert “set list.”
Bruce’s song list, as I said, runs into the hundreds. And Mr. Springsteen, I think, is 59. He is a supreme story teller in song and lyrics.
Mr. Robert M. Friedland of the Ivanhoe juggernaut (NASDAQ: IVAN; NYSE: IVN) wields a potent number of companies, stories and commodities himself. O
h and yes, Robert is something approaching 58.Like The Boss, RMF, as Robert M. Friedland’s colleagues call him, tells a masterful story. I was at an all-night Paris session where Mr. Friedland had a ménage a six of us in stitches, and almost in tears, recounting blow-darting pygmies in the coppered foothills of Indonesia. Transsexual CEOs in Africa. Hallucinating Canadian airplane pilots. "Galactic truth," Monsieur Robert told us.
Both boss-men had news Wednesday April 1. The Boss and his East Streeting band opened their
2009 tour in San Jose to a standing-room only crowd. The boss with a plan, at roughly the same time, told a packed audience in Chile about his mining juggernaut’s new copper belt in Africa.
Yet it is oil -- light petroleum -- greasing the wheels of Mr. Friedland’s jet these days.
In the past two weeks, Ivanhoe Energy’s Robert M. Friedland has been telling investors how his oil company soon might support a far higher stock market value. “The Energy’s” stock is on fire – as sheiks in Dubai and brokers in Missoula, Montana, flock back into one of what they believe is the most compelling petroleum stories in the land. See: Light clean and crude.
Mr. Friedland, like that other Boss with his two newest discs, is working on a dream. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing RMF on stage in many places – at home, on his jet, in a room, at dinner, at conferences, even in a lousy and dimly lit airport waiting room in Ghana. Because Ivanhoe Capital’s boss is always on a stage. Working on a dream. Into a personal brand of magic he is all too willing to share with an audience.
Mr. Springsteen I’ve seen on several stages, too. But always stages. There in San Jose, Calif., the other evening, with our 13-year-old son and my wife. Years ago in New York night clubs and 14th Street music halls. Once as a surprise guest at an emerging Patti Smith show on NYC's Lower East Side, a small show that was cut short by the NY Fire Department. Bruce and his Big Man and his quite wonderful entourage has achieved his dream, I venture to say, but he and the band are still working it – troubadours for more than 40 years now and looking like they love it all.
Robert has achieved his dream as well, I venture to say: extreme wealth to the tune of a billion or more. Grudging respect for delivering what he promises in bold copper and gold and oil and platinum and nickel-plated prospectuses and speeches.
Just as importantly, like the Bruce Boss, the RMF Boss treats his entourage well. His salaries and benefits across the Ivanhoe Capital group of companies up there in Vancouver are -- like his prose -- galactic.
Yes. like Bruce, RMF demands the most from each of the valuable staff members, lawyers, even former diplomats and United Nations-class lawyers and translators. Yes, he is something of a -- how to say this kindly? -- a Master Conductor; i.e, Control Freak. So are not we all?
RMF is on tour right now, somewhere down there in Chile or Ecuador. That explains a decent part of Ivanhoe Energy’s (TSX: T.IE, Stock Forum) doubling of market worth in the short order of two or three weeks. Monsieur Robert is telling the energy story.
One of the most grizzled and circumspect investors I know, after seeing Mr. Friedland describe his little old oil company the other day at a brokers’ gathering, even this investor went out and bought into Ivanhoe Energy (i.e., IE, in Canada anyway -- I could not resist that little ticker pun). That is the way it is with podiums and RMF.
Robert Friedland is always on tour, as fit for middle age as Jack L. in Santa Barbara is for his 90s. The man with the plan is almost always spot-on. (Only time I have seen him wounded: hobbled by foot and back pain, swollen joints and totally out of character after a gulfstreaming three-continent hop in 24 hours.)
Bruce Springsteen is on tour, too. Right now. He too is fit as a fiddle. His East Street Band’s tour started at the show we saw the other evening in California and ends toward the close of summer in Italy and Spain. (Seeing Bruce and the East Street Band in Roma or Espagna, now that would be worth the price of admission, si senor!)
We all -- the kid, the wife and me -- we all loved the first show of Mr. Springsteen’s tour. “Living in the Future,” its lyrics above, was a highlight. A fellow with a prosthetic device sitting next to us – Tony from Monterey – was hoping to get his leg signed at the end of the show.
I have not met a Friedland show I did not love, either. I’ve seen him romance investors in luxury San Francisco hotels, stainless tents in Mongolia’s Gobi, Beijing banquets, Geneva catered lunches, rooftop New Orleans beer pubs, London trading halls. Even lying on his tummy in a Hong Kong tai-chi massage boutique.
Robert Friedland’s oil company, modeled after once-tiny Occidental Petroleum, is probably the smallest piece of his Ivanhoe trading group. It was, I was convinced earlier this week, on the brink of a development in South America that would provide resources to the tiny company in search of heavy oil.
I still might be correct. Ivanhoe Energy already is refining a new process for treating heavy oil and is active in four countries: Ecuador, China, Canada and America’s California. It is the only one of Mr. Friedland’s companies I know of that has compiled a long string of cash-flow positive quarters and gradually increasing production (of oil).
As with Bruce and the East Street Band, you have to watch both of Mr. RMF’s hands. In Chile, this boss unveiled what appears to be a world-class copper belt he controls in Africa’s Congo (DRC).
Speaking at the World Copper Conference on April 1, Robert Friedland pronounced, “Copper is the metal of the century.” He then proceeded to delineate a vast discovery (in the DRC's Katanga Province).
This newest hit, along with the copper-gold discoveries by Ivanhoe Mines at Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia … and a molybdenum strike in Australia … and all that nickel years ago in Voisey’s Bay … and … well, he is the boss with the plan.
Sotto voce, I imagine just hearing him whisper to those nearby who can hear, as he has told me time and again about various Ivanhoe discoveries in Mongolia, Africa and Australia, “Proof that there is a God, my friend. Proof.”
So. You can take this boss or leave him. Most people take him … albeit with a gram of ibuprofen whilst Mr. Friedland sips blackberry soy smoothies. But they take him all the same.
With Bruce? It is much the same way. Most people take him. 1-2-3-4.
Our favorite song this week – the tightest one, the freshest one, the best scripted one – was “Living in the Future.” Hands down. It is also, I think, the way RMF the other boss spends most of his time.
Just remember: None of this has happened yet.
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THOM’S STORY: Thom Calandra during 27 years of road work has helped his audience find value in a quagmire of investment choices. Thom co-founded CBS MarketWatch, MarketWatch.com and FT MarketWatch in Europe. As the voice of Thom Calandra's StockWatch and The Calandra Report, Thom fancied $300-ounce gold before that metal became an investment rage. Thom visited bioscience companies, metals mines and energy companies in a search for reliable sources and fine planetary prospects. Thom's novel PABLO BY NUMBERS was completed in 2008.
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