Simon Village, a resident of the United Kingdom, is the founding director of Argentum Limited, a company with substantial relationships across Africa, and a proven record of accomplishments in business development and corporate finance services to emerging corporates in Southern, Central and Eastern Africa. Simon has served on the boards of numerous international companies, and has led a number of successful global initiatives, the foremost of these being the development of a series of commodity-backed funds, which his team listed in 13 countries, and which revolutionised the gold market, attracting some US$100 billion of new investment into that sector.
Simon also led the financing and development of a number of resource companies, where Simon served as a director, including raising some US$500 million required for building the first gold mine in the DRC since that country’s independence. Prior to this, Simon was a Managing Director with HSBC Bank in London, having worked his way up through HSBC Bank as a top-ranked financial analyst to head of research for their emerging markets business, before being appointed as managing director of the securities business in South Africa. Prior to that Simon worked for De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited in Southern Africa. Simon holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) degree in Mining Engineering from the Camborne School of Mines in the United Kingdom.