David Whitten

Executive Chairman

David joined Clive at 90 West in July 2011 as equal partner and shareholder.

Combined with a passion for the sector, he draws on experience spanning over three decades involving hundreds of global resource project site visits, thousands of meetings with resource companies, direct mining industry experience and a long and distinguished track record managing the growth and performance of large mining, energy and global resource share funds both in Australia and internationally.  

From 1997 to 2010, David was Head of Global Resources at Colonial First State Investments. He was responsible for Colonial’s initial move into the global resources sector and was the prime portfolio manager for numerous, strongly performing global resource equity share funds domiciled in Australia, UK, Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Caymen Islands.  He oversaw the growth of global resource funds that within a decade grew to in excess of $6billion.  He also launched several long short funds focused on global resources, energy and gold equities and his investment team won institutional investment mandates within Australia and a global mining mandate from a large overseas sovereign fund in 2010.  In the same year, he was responsible for launching Colonial’s Soft Commodity and Agribusiness sector funds worldwide.

A geologist by training, David initially worked as an exploration geologist with EZ Industries for four years in the early 1980’ before joining GIO as a mining analyst and then as resources portfolio manager. Prior to his appointment at Colonial First State, he worked as Director of Global Resources at Equitilink Ltd. where he managed several successful global resource investment funds.