Thomas S. Kaplan is an American entrepreneur, natural resources investor, philanthropist and art collector.

He is the Founder and Principal of Tigris Group and the Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of The Electrum Group LLC, a New York City-based investment, advisory and asset management firm with a principal focus on the natural resources sector.

Kaplan began his career as an advisor to hedge funds. In 1993, he founded Apex Silver Mines to capitalize on the improving supply/demand fundamentals of metals.[1] While he was Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Apex, Kaplan's team discovered and financed the San Cristobal deposit in Bolivia, now one of the largest producers of silver and zinc in the world.[2][3] Kaplan retired from Apex Silver at the end of 2004 to focus on his new exploration projects.[4]

In 2003, a company related to Kaplan became the largest investor in African Platinum Plc (then known as Southern African Resources Plc), enabling it to explore and develop one of the largest platinum group metals projects in South Africa. In 2007, Kaplan sold his position in African Platinum as part of a transaction in which the company was acquired by Impala Platinum Limited, at a valuation of $580 million.[5]

Also in 2003, Kaplan co-founded Leor Exploration & Production LLC, which became the fastest-growing privately held hydrocarbon exploration and production company in the United States. In 2007, Leor’s natural gas assets were sold to EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. for $2.55 billion.[6]

Kaplan’s knowledge of the natural resources sector led him to begin investing heavily in gold in 2000 and to be one of the first to predict that gold prices would increase dramatically.

Since the sales of African Platinum and Leor in 2007, Kaplan has focused his investment attention primarily on the Electrum Group. Its exploration arm, Electrum Ltd., which he co-founded with Dr. Larry Buchanan, owns a diversified international portfolio of gold exploration assets. Its other entities hold significant interests in several publicly-traded companies, including NovaGold Resources Inc.[7] and Gabriel Resources Ltd.,[8] two companies that own several of the largest proven gold resources in the world.[9][10]

His view on gold has not changed.[11] On February 25, 2009, he commented in Marc Faber’s Gloom, Boom & Doom Report: “Some will say that $800 gold seems expensive. I would suggest the contrary: that a few years from now, sub-$1000 gold will feel like a true gift... The forced liquidation of leveraged positions of all kinds in late 2008 and early 2009 has presented an extraordinary opportunity to build long gold positions at low prices… [I]t should not be a surprise to see gold set new highs against all currencies, including a strong dollar, and an acceleration of the most enduring bull market in the world.”[12]

Kaplan also believes that asset managers are re-examining gold as an acceptable investment option.

In a January 2011 op-ed in the Financial Times’ Market Insights column, Kaplan discussed the Prudent Man construct as a tool to evaluate the benefits and risks of investing in gold. In that piece, he explained that a variety of factors – including the supply of and demand for gold, the devastation of financial industry and government balance sheets and the fact that gold is not tied to another person’s ability to pay – are causing asset managers and general banks to begin readmitting “gold back into the select group of prudent asset classes.” According to Kaplan, these developments suggest “interesting times ahead” for those who own the precious metal. Therefore, “the Prudent Man rule may well be golden indeed.”[13]

As a leading investor in gold, Kaplan is credited with correctly predicting that gold prices would increase dramatically.

His investment strategy and commitment to gold led Bloomberg Businessweek to refer to him as “Gold’s Evangelist.”[14] In a May 2010 profile piece in the Wall Street Journal, Kaplan said, “I’ve reached a point where I feel the only asset I have confidence in is gold,” adding, “You’ve got a perfect storm with no apparent solution. … If the world does well, gold will be fine. If the world doesn’t do well, gold will also do fine … but a lot of other things could collapse.”[15]

Beyond that, Kaplan’s leadership in the gold market was recognized in a Dec. 2010 Wall Street Journal article, which described Kaplan along with other investors including John Paulson, David Einhorn and John Burbank. The article stated that Kaplan is “making a bigger wager on gold than almost any investor,” noting that he believes junior minors provide the “greatest leverage to a bull market” and that the world is “entering an era defined by the scarcity value of great precious-metals assets.”[16]

Kaplan and his family support a number of philanthropic and conservation causes in the United States and the developing world. Kaplan is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Panthera Corporation, a charity devoted to preserving big cats and their ecosystems around the globe.[17] Among its many endeavors, Panthera created and maintains the largest protected jaguar corridor in the Americas.[18][19] In particular, the work of Panthera’s CEO, Dr. Alan Rabinowitz, and Kaplan to balance the preservation of the jaguar corridor in Brazil with sustainable ranching was the focus of a January 2011 profile by CBS’ 60 Minutes.[20] In that piece, Kaplan outlined his thesis for utilizing sustainable ranching and community development to protect the apex predator and its environment: “There is no better way to stop poaching than to make the local community say: ‘Hey, wait a minute, our children have medicine and education because of the jaguar.’ When you show that, you have won their hearts and their minds. Then you have won the war.”[21]

Further to their commitment to ensuring the survival of the big cats, Kaplan and his wife, Dafna Recanati Kaplan, recently endowed the Recanati-Kaplan Center at Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, the WildCRU, creating the leading university-based felid conservation program.

The Kaplans also founded Project Orianne Ltd., a historic effort focused on conservation of the eastern indigo snake and its habitat, the long-leaf pine forests of the Southeastern United States.[22]

Kaplan is also active in community and family philanthropy. He is the President of the Board of Directors of the 92nd Street Y, a world-renowned, Jewish community and cultural center that strives to enrich the lives of the people who pass through its doors by hosting events and forums with some of today’s most influential leaders and thinkers. The Kaplan family has provided financial support for the Eternal Jewish Family and the Lillian Jean Kaplan Foundation, named after Kaplan’s mother.[23] The Kaplans have also funded the Lillian Jean Kaplan Renal Transplantation Center at the University of Miami as well as a variety of prizes and grants for medical science research. Kaplan also serves on the Advisory Board of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital Department of Internal Medicine.[24]

Kaplan holds Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees in history from Oxford University. He is married to Dafna Recanati Kaplan and they have three children.[25

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