Jessica Cross

Biographical Information
"Jessica is the CEO of the VM Group (formerly Virtual Metals), the successor company to Crosswords Research and Consulting, which she formed in 1994 to provide gold research to the international metal and mining industry. In 1997, she added the virtual-gold.com website on the Internet, offering a full 24-hour gold consultancy service including data bases covering historical and forward looking data series, library, regular market commentary, guest forum and daily news clipping service. In 1999, the company evolved out of Virtual Gold, to become Virtual Metals Research & Consulting with the launch of two sister websites covering silver and the pgms. In 2000 with mining company underwriting, Jessica expanded Virtual Metals to provide research and insights for 30 corporate clients and in 2005 launched MineLife a non-profit industry alliance designed to source socio-economic funding in collaboration with Virtual Metals founder mining sponsors and international Aid Agencies.

"Jessica was a regular columnist for the Nikkei Research Institute for Industry and Markets Gold Report published in Japanese in Tokyo, and has presented numerous papers at international conferences including South African Investment Conference, Financial Times Gold Conference, LBMA Conference, the Australian Gold Conference and the ABARE Conference. She has chaired sessions of the Financial Times and LBMA Conferences, assisted with the structure of World Economic Forum sessions, and is widely recognised for her economics expertise, notably in gold derivatives.

"Prior to Virtual Metals, Jessica was employed by RTZ Corporation Plc, Consolidated Gold Fields Plc, Gold Fields of South Africa, and Anglo American Corporation as a precious metals analyst in positions of increasing importance. At Goldfields she was responsible for the market analysis and forecasting of market conditions for the Company's Northam Platinum Mine. At Consolidated Goldfields she co-authored the authoritative annual Gold Survey.

"While at RTZ, she reported to the Head of the Economics Department and the Board of Directors on all matters concerning gold and platinum group metals including the analysis of market developments and dissemination of information with appropriate recommendations and price forecasting to the RTZ Group of Companies. She assisted with investor and public relations and held regular meetings with fund managers, the press and stock analysts. Jessica holds Honours B.Sc. degrees from the Witwatersrand and South Africa Universities and a Ph.D. in Mineral Resources Engineering from Nottingham University in the UK."