Teo Dechev is Building a Mining Business in Serbia and Bulgaria

December 4, 2020

Teo Dechev is the Chief Executive Officer, President, and Director of Mundoro Capital Inc. She brings to the company both a technical understanding of the key issues in the sector through a geological and mineral engineering degree as well as extensive capital markets experience and hands-on management experience.

Ms. Dechev’s capital markets experience includes positions at well-recognized bank-owned and independent investment banks in Canada. She has covered institutional equity research, corporate finance and M&A, primarily focused on the resource sector but also covering technology, financial institutions and diversified products sectors.

Prior to joining Mundoro Capital, she was a Vice President in Corporate Finance at a Toronto investment bank. In addition, she spent more than three years with a mineral resources company managing their commodity and derivatives trading program for gold, copper and silver.

Ms. Dechev has an MBA from the Schulich School of Business at York University in Canada, a Bachelor of Applied Science and Engineering in Geological & Mineral Engineering from the University of Toronto, and is a licensed Professional Engineer in both British Columbia and Ontario.

She currently sits on the executive board of the University of Toronto’s Engineering Alumni Association as well as the advisory board of the Pierre Lassond Mineral Engineering Program at the University of Toronto.

This 2,845 word interview with Ms. Dechev details her company’s interesting business development in Serbia and Bulgaria.

“When we started making our applications in 2011, it was clear to us that the industry hadn’t woken up to the potential in Eastern Europe. If a mineral camp like that, for example, existed in Canada, it would be very, very heavily staked. I think from a geological point of view everyone recognized that there was strong mineral wealth, but they hadn’t really woken up to the fact that there is established mining, good community support.

The rules of law had changed significantly from prior political structures during the Soviet era. Now these are primarily democratic states. Bulgaria is in the European Union since 2007, and Serbia is a candidate to become part of the European Union.

So we saw that as a really great opportunity, where there was very strong geological potential for further discoveries of more porphyry and epithermal-related systems, but lacking a large western community of exploration companies.”

This in depth local regulatory knowledge is paired with in depth local geological knowledge:

“We are in the process of generating more projects in the region, simply because we’ve spent a lot of time understanding what are the right lithological units that have a propensity to host porphyry and epithermal systems.

We look for specific types of structures. We understand which rock units are more conducive, which ones are not, when they formed. That experience has been gained because we have spent probably more than any other company in the region on exploration and drilling programs simply because we have all these partnerships.

That’s allowed us to recognize units that might otherwise be overlooked by groups that are not in the region as long as we have been. That gives us an advantage.”

The company is also increasing liquidity in their stock:

“By creating this OTCQB listing, and even though we do have DTC clearance in the U.S., the two combined actually allow our U.S. shareholders to be able to not only trade our shares more freely, but also to hold them more securely under their own names with less additional costs that are required by the American brokerage firms.

And it’s not an onerous cost for Mundoro. It’s a very straightforward listing. Clearly the OTC recognizes some of the structural hurdles for U.S. investors and has created a really well-streamlined program in order to create more liquidity for Canadian-listed companies in the U.S., so it’s not onerous in terms of cost, but very beneficial for investors.”

Get the complete picture by reading the entire 2,845 word interview with Ms. Dechev, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.