Arlington Rapallo is a gathering, not a ticker.
In September 2026, Mining Network recorded Frank Giustra on the Italian Riviera at Arlington Rapallo. Simon Catt — director of Arlington Group Asset Management, founder of GMP Securities Europe, and a banker who has originated more than $3 billion of transactions — is the Arlington name tied to that circuit. Giustra is founder and chief executive of the Fiore Group, a Canadian Mining Hall of Fame financier, and a director of the International Crisis Group after six years as co-chair.
He did not issue a price target. He has argued the same direction in gold since 2001 and has said, in other interviews, that he has held physical metal from that period without selling. At Arlington Rapallo he used a harder phrase: forever war. Then he named the two metals he believes still work inside that phrase. Gold as the monetary asset. Copper as the industrial one.
That is the load-bearing part of the conversation. The rest is how he got there.
The Three Theatres Giustra Laid Out for Simon Catt
Giustra mapped three theatres onto the metals market.
The first is Russia and NATO. He pointed to European rearmament under a NATO spending target of 5% of GDP. Defence procurement is copper, energy, and time. It is not a footnote in a copper supply model.
The second is Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, and the energy lanes beside it. A shock in that waterway is an oil event first. It becomes a diesel event for every operating mine. It becomes a gold event if official and private buyers treat the disruption as monetary insurance.
The third is the United States and China. Giustra put a U.S. federal debt stock above $40 trillion next to official gold demand. In his telling, that stock is why central banks have kept buying metal even when Treasury yields are high and the dollar is not collapsing on a screen. De-dollarization, as he has described it for years, began in earnest when reserve assets could be frozen. Gold does not need a password.
Those three theatres, he argued at Arlington Rapallo, point the same way. Gold because the monetary system is being asked to fund conflict and roll debt at once. Copper because mine grades are falling, grids and data centres still need metal, and defence demand is no longer a rounding error.
That is a framework. It is not a guarantee. The same week, copper was holding near $14,000 a tonne after new LME deliveries eased a squeeze. Gold was trading nearer $4,270 after a stretch above $4,600. A 5% 10-year yield and a Federal Reserve meeting sat on both prices. A terrace in Rapallo does not cancel those prints.
The Holding He Disclosed
Giustra is a founder and locked-up shareholder of Copper Giant (TSXV: CGNT). The company’s Mocoa project in Putumayo, Colombia, hosts an inferred resource of 1.12 billion tonnes at 0.51% copper-equivalent, according to published company figures. A preliminary economic assessment is planned for the fourth quarter of 2026 after a C$31 million financing led by Denarius Metals. Trafigura holds a 10-year offtake covering 20% of future copper and molybdenum concentrate.
That holding belongs in the same paragraph as his copper argument. Readers can weigh a long-cycle supply thesis and a specific project without being asked to forget who owns the shares. Transparency is not an accusation. It is the minimum.
On gold companies he pointed to Aris Mining’s high-grade Segovia operation as the sort of file he prefers: scale, grade, a jurisdiction he is prepared to accept, and a funded plan. His filter for junior companies, as he stated at Arlington Rapallo, is brief. Size. Grade. Location. Politics. Then time. That filter has built large companies. It has also left other projects behind. Both outcomes are part of the same method.
What Arlington Rapallo and Simon Catt Add
Simon Catt did not need Giustra to invent a copper deficit. Arlington Group works in the European mining-finance lane that once ran through GMP. Arlington Rapallo is the off-calendar version of that lane: operators, capital, and a recorded conversation on the Ligurian coast.
The usefulness of the tape is compression. A person who has sat on the International Crisis Group and on mining boards treated war spending, energy chokepoints, and metal demand as one problem. Most industry stages keep those subjects in separate sessions. Arlington Rapallo put them in one.
How to Read It Without Turning It Into an Order
Giustra’s record in building Wheaton, in financing mines, and in holding gold through more than one cycle is public. A record is not a put option on the next Federal Reserve statement. Copper Giant is a development file until a PEA, a permit path, and a jurisdiction test say otherwise. Gold above $4,200 can still fall if real yields rise. Copper near $14,000 can still fall if warehouses keep filling and China stays split between factory output and weak households.
If a reader already wanted official gold demand and a tight copper market as the backbone of a portfolio, Arlington Rapallo is a clear statement of that view from someone who has lived both sides of it — the crisis brief and the mine finance. If a reader wanted a ticker, the next documents are the PEA, the offtake, the resource notes, and a 10-year yield that is already testing 5%.
Conclusion
At Arlington Rapallo, Frank Giustra told Simon Catt’s circle that a long war and two metals belong in the same sentence. He has held the gold half of that sentence since 2001. He holds a disclosed position in the copper half at Mocoa. The interview is a map of one financier’s experience and one gathering’s agenda. The PEA, the warehouse data, and the bond market still have to agree.
Disclaimer
This article is based on the September 2026 Mining Network conversation with Frank Giustra recorded at Arlington Rapallo, and on public disclosure for Copper Giant and related companies. Giustra is a shareholder of issuers he discusses. Simon Catt is affiliated with Arlington Group Asset Management. Company names are examples for context, not recommendations. This is not investment advice. Speak with a licensed adviser. The author and publisher accept no liability for actions taken on this article.