Keith Phillips, a managing director and head of Cowen & Company's Mining Investment Banking Group, says strong companies with solid balance sheets are on the hunt for precious metals development projects or small producers trading at steep discounts.

The Pretium story is simple: a group of successful geologists have made an extraordinarily large and high-grade discovery in an area called Valley of the Kings, which is part of the company’s flagship Brucejack gold project in Canada.

Recently I visited the breathtaking city of Hong Kong to speak at the seventh-annual Mines and Money conference, Asia-Pacific's premier event for mining investment deal-making and capital-raising.