Charles Lyon – Opening Remark | Mongolia Investment Forum: New York 2025

Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me here today. It's a great honor to speak in front of this group. This has been a tremendous market opportunity for the folks at StoneX, and I appreciate the city of New York and the entire country of Mongolia for creating such a great environment for business. For all of our businesses at StoneX, we really appreciate both of those venues. They're super important to what we do, and we are absolutely committed to both markets. So thank you both for coming. The important thing today, and we wanted to get through something that I think is essential, and I was given voluminous notes on what I should say, the things I should cover, and we knew all the things about Mongolia that would be really interesting: the demographics as noted, the young population, the resources, the stable government as noted, the coalition government that's been in place, the overall investment climate throughout Mongolia. But one thing that really struck me, and StoneX coming from a small organization where I think there was 10 or 12 of us 25 years ago to growing to over 5,080 offices throughout the world. One thing we noticed is that these smaller markets that are developing, that are conducive for growth, that have a commitment to investment, that have a really positive climate, gives us an opportunity to look at all of the spectrum of business we do. For the last 15 or so years that we've been servicing folks in FX throughout the country, as well as thinking about other opportunities throughout Mongolia, at each turn we found a government that's committed to moving forward and thinking about how you can get investment, how you can create a fair climate for investors, and how you can think about developing the vast resources for this amazing country. Now, everybody knows it's landlocked. There are challenges around geography here, but the most amazing thing I find once you start thinking about Mongolia is each one of our groups that have gone through, and we've had conversations with the financials group, and I had the pleasure of spending some time with Billy Kulie who leads that in Asia for us, in speaking through the environment that we have that we reach when we're in Mongolia. It is unbelievable the amount of engagement that the government and the companies and private companies have, the amount of transparency, information dialogue, the mining opportunities in gold and precious metals. Tom Deoville is here from our team. We think about infrastructural investments, and we have Chuck Moser on our team who's going to be speaking about that later on this afternoon. But thinking of that environment that we've experienced firsthand, that we've come into, makes us comfortable to come forward, speak with investors who we represent, folks on our team, and to bring together a diverse coalition of folks who may be unfamiliar with the opportunity inside the market, who may be unfamiliar with doing business in Mongolia, who may be a little bit tepid about doing business in this sort of climate of tariff discussion and challenging geopolitical eras. What I think I'm here to tell all of you is that in our almost two decades of operating inside of Mongolia, we've seen a continually improving climate. One that is welcoming to our teams, to practical and reasonable discussions, and has been an incredible partner for us to walk through and go through various investment theories, to work through our mining opportunities, and to think about the financial development of the market. I absolutely have no doubt that this market will continue to progress positively. You'll see a move towards investment grade. You'll see a rush for investments and resources. You'll see that tidal wave coming that always seems to come a little bit later after you get to Mongolia conference four or five, and we're in Singapore three and four. This room will be twice the size. It will be filled with more and more folks. What I think I'm here to tell you guys is that it's an opportunity worth focusing on now. This is a tremendous opportunity for the folks in this room to think about one of the best investment opportunities in the region of the world here that we see in Asia. There's something else I think that is remarkable: we've gone through and had this conversation at StoneX with 25 or 30 different jurisdictions, and we look at them. I'm not going to name them because I don't want it to seem like there's bias here, but this is one of the few where we see the most conducive environment of those 25 for investment. The only place where we go and we feel like there is an absolute commitment to investor integrity and for an investment climate that's positive. So what I would say, and I'm speaking from StoneX directly, our experience has been a tremendous one, and we're looking forward to many more years of investment and of dialogue and of growth in Mongolia. I really appreciate everybody on the StoneX team and the entire delegation from Mongolia, and of course the city of New York, this great city that we have here with this tremendous economy. We really appreciate them coming and being represented as well. And for all the members of the StoneX team who are here today who have worked so hard to build our business and our partnership, my great appreciation and thank you. It's an honor.