Management

Mr. Espig assumed the role of President and CEO on November 7, 2013 and guided the Company through its restructuring, which included entering the company into CCAA and successfully exiting on November 21, 2014. He is experienced in the analysis of investment opportunities, raising capital, deal sourcing, financial structuring, and corporate turnaround. Mr. Espig has structured over US$2.0 billion in private equity and pre-IPO investment transactions from the principal side and is a pioneer of SPACs, having completed over $1.0 BN in transactions.

Mr. Espig served as Vice-President of the Principal Finance and Securitization Group and Asia Special Situations Group for Goldman Sachs Japan. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Mr. Espig was Vice-President of Olympus Capital, a New York private equity firm, where he participated in corporate restructurings, investment analysis and financing negotiations for both domestic and international investments.

In 1989, Mr. Espig received his B.A. from the University of British Columbia and later received his MBA from Columbia Business School, where he was a Chazen International Scholar.

Mr. Espig has been active in the turnaround of mining projects and has functioned in management and director roles for numerous mining companies.

Mr. Whitty has over fifteen years of advanced-stage exploration experience working on a variety of porphyry copper +/- molybdenum deposits and copper skarns as well as Carlin-style gold and orogenic gold deposits.  Mr. Whitty completed his B.Sc. degree in geology at Carleton University in Ottawa and his M.Sc. degree in geology with the Mineral Deposit Research Unit (“MDRU”) at UBC in Vancouver. After graduating, he worked as a consultant for TetraTech EBA. He subsequently, moved to Arizona where he worked for Freeport-McMoRan for nine years with the mine site exploration group where he provided geological services to most of the companies mines in the southwestern US. Before coming to Nicola, Mr. Whitty worked for Nevada Gold Mines, a Barrick-Newmont joint venture, at the Goldrush Mine, which is located within the Cortez district in northern Nevada.  As Senior Geologist at the newly producing mine, he successfully managed multi-million-dollar drill programs.

Bill Cawker joined Nicola in March of 2023 taking over duties for Corporate & Investor Relations, Social Media, and in March 2024 as Corporate Secretary. He is an experienced in-house specialist who has worked primarily assisting small cap / microcap publicly listed companies in the fields of technology and natural resources. Bill has worked at leading Canadian financial institutions and been active with numerous public companies and is a graduate in Economics from the University of British Columbia where his focus was CDN and US Economic History specifically Free Trade.

Sam Wong is a Certified Public Accountant with more than 18 years of international experience in the mining and resource sector. He has held senior executive positions in publicly traded mining companies. Mr. Wong’s expertise includes financial reporting, corporate risk management, corporate strategy and planning, and investment evaluation. Mr. Wong began his career at Deloitte LLP in Vancouver, where he provided assurance and tax services.