Why Billionaire Frank Giustra Is Making A Massive Bet On Inflation

09-03-2012 • http://www.businessinsider.com, Tommy Humphreys

We had the opportunity to sit down with Frank Giustra last week, the lion behind Lionsgate Films, and an early architect of countless resource companies—most notably Wheaton River Minerals (now known as the $33B Goldcorp, which spun out the $12B Silver Wheaton), Petro Rubiales (now the $7B Pacific Rubiales), and Urasia Energy.

By all accounts Giustra is brilliant, connected and wealthy. He made headlines in 2007 by pledging over $100 million and half of his future earnings to establish a charitable foundation with President Clinton. Outside of philanthropy however, Giustra has been reluctant to draw attention to himself, and rarely speaks publicly about investing.

In 2002 however, he moved heavily into gold and published, “A Tarnished Dollar Will Put the Shine on Gold”, when it was trading under $300 an ounce. Ten years later and with gold now priced over $1600/oz., it still occupies the largest percentage of his investment portfolio, and his views remain the same.

In discussing gold during the interview he said, “I believe it’s going a lot higher…it’s going to have a parabolic spike, caused by some event or some loss of confidence…a US dollar crisis would be a perfect example. That will cause gold to go through the roof, and then everybody will want to own it…I don’t think we’re even close to that yet…Gold will probably have a much greater run than some of the other hard assets–because it’s also a currency.” (19:16)