Fundies from Argonaut and bankers from Jarden eye a bigger slice of commodities boom centred on WA miners

An unwavering commodities boom has a star Perth fund manager hungry for more and led a Trans-Tasman investment bank to beef up its team for a bigger slice of mining deals out west.

Argonaut’s gold-heavy investment funds had a bumper 2025, perching them amongst the nation’s top performers. Its Global Gold fund generated a return of 119.4 per cent and its broader Natural Resources fund 68.7 per cent.

A long-time gold bull, Argonaut’s head of funds management David Franklyn is unsurprisingly still keen on the precious metal in 2026, yet has three other commodities in his sights — uranium, copper and gas.

“I think what we’re seeing is most of the major economies in the world are recognising that uranium and nuclear power is part of the power mix going forward and there’s still a dearth of new supply that will come on anytime soon,” Mr Franklyn said.

“Copper is also a standout, you’ve got demand drivers like data centres and it’s very hard to bring on large volumes of new copper supply. You’ve got lots of production coming from Chile, Peru and the Congo, these are regions that are subject to volatility.

“Then the east coast gas market we think is a really good opportunity as a function of poor government policy. Demand in the market has remained pretty firm, but supply is dropping off because of government policy not allowing development or exploration.”

Mr Franklyn is expanding his team in anticipation of another lucrative year, with a mining analyst veteran — whose name was unable to be divulged — starting next month as the latest hire.

“We think it’s a good time for us to increase the expertise and scale we have in the business,” he said.

Auckland-headquartered Investment bank Jarden recently finished a hiring spree to crack the red-hot mining mergers and acquisition market centred on Perth-based gold producers.

Jarden earlier this month poached Gresham Advisory’s managing director Adam Reid and his lieutenants to lead the push.

Mr Reid has advised giants like Newcrest, Glencore and Evolution Mining, and brokered mid-market deals like the $3.7 billion sale of Gold Road Resources to South Africa’s Gold Fields.

The new Jarden M&A team will be based in Sydney and complement Jarden’s Perth-based resources analyst Ben Lyons.

Jarden executive chair Aidan Allen said his recent M&A recruits will be making many plane trips over the Nullarbor.

“We know that the Perth market is a very focused market and intertwined with resources, so ultimately we will have boots on the ground in WA very often,” Mr Allen said.

“Then looking ahead we absolutely see the opportunity to build and extend our business into WA.”

Mr Allen said there is a gap in the resources market that Jarden wants to “bridge”.

“When you look at the resources space the challenge is you’ve got two very different ends, plus the mid market where there’s been tremendous amount of gold merger activity that Adam has been a key leader in,” he said.

“At the smaller end of the market there’s a lot of capital raisings where the success of the likes of Canaccord and Argonaut has been in.

“But there’s a very different advisor that sits in that world to the ones that are advising Newcrest, Rio Tinto, Glencore and BHP etcetera in the larger end of town. And what we have in our new team are people that actually can bridge the both.”