Not precisely. The group that owned and ran the San Francisco and NYC gold and other hard-asset events, Summit Media/Summit Professional Networks, sold its 6,000-attendee Mining INDABA event, Cape Town, RSA, to Euromoney International for an undisclosed sum. No hard confirmation on Summit's soft and softer assets in NY and SF. I am told those two shows are now kaput. Summit tried to combine conferences and magazines with web sites and other assets. Some of those already had closed or entered into a liquidation or bankruptcy protection. I have yet to hear back from Summit's Josh Brous, who ran the shows and apparently is going to the new-co that runs Indaba each February.

Summit took over these and other properties and events from workaholic Miami, Florida, businesswoman Sandy Lawrence in the mid-2000s. Ms. Lawrence, a Yoga fanatic and successful restaurant and now Napa County vineyard and winery owner-operator, spent more than 10 years building them. Her two pride and joys were San Francisco and Indaba in South Africa. I have declined to attend any of Summit's waning exhibitor shows in recent years.? The last time I attended both of these — which by the way I both covered in the early 1990s for San Francisco newspapers and wire services, and later spoke at with The Calandra Report and CBS MarketWatch — I told Mr. Brous it seemed to me the company deliberately was stifling each of the shows.

In the past three years, at least, so-called retail attendance, and exhibitors, waned. I mean, ghost towns along the empty aisles of the Marriott Marquis in NYC ?in May and Moscone Center's underground Marriot?t? space in SF? at Thanksgiving time?.

The expensive ?show in Cape Town is shrinking, too, and facing competition from several new organizations, including at least one investment bank. The ones in San Francisco and NYC were all greasy fingers snatching shabby pens. Tim Wood of Denver Gold Group tells me "indeed San Francisco and New York are euthanized. That is not confirmation. Tim Wood, a South African, worked with both Sandy and the Summit group and now runs the Denver Gold Show and other events for that trade group.

Karen Roche, who is publisher of Streetwise Reports (Gold Report, Energy Report, and so on) tells me today that she is thinking about creating another event in what could be a vacuum in San Francisco in late November each year. Ms. Roche and her team, based in Sonoma County, California, each November took over the San Francisco Mint and staged a wonderful party with lots of good food and a preferred list of attendees.

More to come.

 

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Prowling: I met the Israeli operators of RedHill BioPharma ($RDH)

This week in San Francisco. ?They're from Tel Aviv.??

The company  is working through clinical trials for Crohn's disease and has other myco-bacterial solutions for multiple sclerosis. Several moving parts; I am looking at it. I don't own it. Anti-bacterial solutions to new molecular compounds in GI disorders often, I am told, hit dead-ends in Phase III trials. I am getting advice here from a very best Boston friend in gastrointestinal medicine.
 
Guy Goldberg, in front of 35 lunching investors at L'Olivier's on Davis Street, tried to joke about returning to Tel Aviv today. The chief business development officer said if that prospect does not give you gastrointestinal pain, probably nothing will. The crowd groaned. The menu, including  ? one of The City's best fettucine primaveras??, excelled.
 
?– Thom Calandra?

  
$110 yearly: Does Not Recur

 
$110: Will Recur Yearly