The Junior Mining Company Management Checklist (downloadable)
Management is the single most important factor when it comes to successfully building a mine, make sure it ticks the boxes during your DD.
Human capital
Proven people, successful in bad markets (either run by tier one promoters or top tier two promoters, promoters who are young enough that they aren't yet tier one, but have already had two or three successes behind their belt)
Management should not have a history of jumping between unrelated commodities or jurisdiction (ambulance chasing)
The past successes of the company were achieved by the current management
Management is transparent and communicates regularly
Financial management
Bonus structure linked to share price (SP) and not M&A (incentive for management to favor M&A activity only if truly accretive to the company)
No hefty change of control payments if the company gets taken over (golden parachutes)
No personal loan from company to key members
No outsized/discretionary bonus for normal events (management is rewarded despite no catalysts)
No ill-timed paid promotions/no promotions when no catalysts
First-class travel
No excessive G&A (to be analyzed in the context of the operations)
Financing/shareholding structure
Management should have a stake in the company, however not too significant (you want skin in the game, but an overdominant stake is dangerous for minority shareholder rights)
Options should have a vesting period (no vesting promotes short-term thinking)
No insider-only financing (unfair to shareholders and governance risks)
No option grants post-financing
No bonus structure linked to market cap
No change of control payments
Management shows effort to limit shareholder dilution
No related party transactions
Cheap shares in spin-off
Conflict of interest
No key member personally owning royalty on the company's projects (check NI 43-101 on SEDAR)
No key member has high role at unrelated company
Management members do not personally own royalty on the company’s flagship project
No property deals/financings between companies under the same management
No nepotism (hiring friends, family or other close personal connections)
No cronyism (favoring friends or allies for contracts, promotions or deals)
No cozy consultancy relationship (using one firm for consultancy on fieldwork, technical reports, QP sign-offs)
Reputable auditors, consultant, lawyers, IR firms
Distractions/commitment
Management does not have too many side-gigs
Insiders are buying
CEO is not relocating far from the flagship project
CEO is not going through divorce or the lost a child/spouse (emotional distraction)
For your convenience, this list is also available as a checklist with checkboxes, ready to be downloaded and printed. If you feel any important element has been missed from the list, let us know in the comments and we will make the amendments.
Thank you for reading. If you appreciate our work, feel free to sub and buy us coffee at the following link: https://buymeacoffee.com/antithesis2025