Directors and Senior Management

George Eccles
Chairman (Non-executive)

George graduated with a law degree from the London School of Economics and then trained as a Chartered Accountant. He became a Partner in the London office of Deloitte Haskins & Sells before moving to Moscow where he was a Partner in Coopers & Lybrand and later in Deloitte & Touche. More recently, he has worked in Kazakhstan as Chief Operating Officer of the Central Asian-American Enterprise Fund, a US government sponsored development fund. George is a member of the Audit and Remuneration Committees.

Dr Jeff O'Leary

Non-executive Director

Jeff joined as a non-executive director of Hambledon Mining plc in July 2011. He has had a successful career in the mining industry, having been responsible for all matters relating to geology and reserve estimation at RTZ world wide. He then joined Samuel Montagu (later HSBC) as Managing Director of their mining group worldwide. Whilst there he was responsible for all technical aspects of the bank's investments and corporate finance activity. He worked closely with Antofagasta, CSN, Ivanhoe, Xstrata, Corus and the Mittal group. He was the senior lecturer in geostatistics at the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and a Chartered Engineer. He is a non-executive director of European Goldfields Plc.

Nicholas Bridgen
Non-executive Director

Nicholas trained in London with Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co. (now KPMG) as a Chartered Accountant and then spent 14 years with Rio Tinto plc group accounting, business evaluation and group planning. From 1995 he worked for companies operating in the FSU. In 1997 he formed Hambledon Mining Company (the forerunner of Hambledon Mining plc.). From then until 2010 he was Chief Executive of the Company. He lived in Kazakhstan with his family for 7 years and speaks Russian. He now lives in Kazakhstan.

Tim Daffern
Chief Executive

Tim Joined the Company in November 2010 from Angel Mining Plc where he was director of mining and exploration. He gained an honours degree in mining engineering from the University of New South Wales with a masters in business administration from the Open University.  He has more than 22 years mining and process engineering experience of both underground and open pit operations in Australia, Europe, the FSU and Kazakhstan. Tim is a Fellow of the Institution of Minerals, Mining & Metallurgy, and of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

Baurzhan Yerkeev
Executive Director
General director, TOO Altai Ken-Bayitu

Baurzhan has a degree from the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, Geological Faculty (Russia). He is an experienced exploration geologist, with extensive knowledge of Kazakhstan, the CIS and Altai Region (where Sekisovskoye is located). He has managed projects for the State Geophysical-Geochemical Expedition and the State Exploration Expedition. More recently, he has been a director of CRS, the Company's geological consultants. Baurzhan is experienced in working with the various State bodies responsible for approving the Company's development plans and has worked with many western and local companies. He has received specialist training in the UK from Datamine International and is a qualified Datamine trainer.

William Morgan
CFO & Company Secretary Bill is a UK Chartered Accountant with 30 years accountancy and financial management experience. He has worked in the UK, Russia, the Far East, Africa and previously in Kazakhstan between 1994 and 1997. He has been instrumental in several successful start-ups and restructuring of companies, in the telecoms and mining industries.