Stan Bharti looks at global finance a bit differently than most. As the founder and Executive Chairman of Forbes & Manhattan, he has spent over 30 years navigating high-stakes international business and securing more than $10 billion for major infrastructure, technology, and resource projects worldwide. He studied engineering in Moscow and at the University of London before he ground it out in the mines of Northern Ontario. He is an engineer who learned how to build businesses from scratch.
These days, his focus has shifted toward what comes next. Through Aberdeen International, he is heavily involved in backing clean-energy innovation, particularly hydrogen technology. Between a historic $10 million gift to establish the Bharti School of Engineering at Laurentian University and his work with the Bharti Charitable Foundation, he has devoted significant energy to education, wildlife conservation, and community support globally. We sat down with Stan to talk about markets, diplomacy, and why the old playbook for running a company no longer works.
How did your early technical background as an engineer prepare you for global merchant banking?
Stan Bharti: Engineering and high finance are built on the same principle of structural integrity. Whether you are digging a deep-level mine out in Sudbury or putting together a massive cross-border financial deal, you need to know what’s holding the foundation up. My time studying in Moscow and London, followed by hands-on fieldwork at Falconbridge, taught me to view risk through a practical lens. When I finally jumped into public markets and started Forbes & Manhattan, that background became our unfair advantage. We look at the actual asset, the engineering, the rocks, and the infrastructure first. Suppose the foundation of a project is broken. If the foundation of a project is broken, no amount of clever financial engineering will ever save it.
What is your philosophy for identifying early-stage opportunities and scaling them to full production?
Stan Bharti: Honestly, it’s about finding valuation gaps before anyone else notices them. We look for high-quality assets that are completely overlooked, stressed, or misunderstood, and then we step in with the capital and the right team to fix them. We get our hands dirty and actually run the operations. To do that successfully, you need a serious ecosystem of talent. That is why we built an in-house team of over 1,000 people, including geologists, engineers, corporate lawyers, and bankers. When we took on Consolidated Thompson Iron Mines, we scaled it up and eventually sold it for $4 billion. That whole run really validated our model on a global stage.
What prompted your decision to expand into clean energy industries like hydrogen technology through Aberdeen International?
Stan Bharti: It is like that old Wayne Gretzky line where you have to skate to where the puck is going. The global energy transition is the biggest macro-shift of our generation and represents the next great economic frontier. With Aberdeen, we realized pretty quickly that if the world is actually going to transition to a low-carbon economy, it will need scalable infrastructure to support it. That is what led us to hydrogen, which is one of the few viable, high-density options for heavy industry and power grids. It is a major commercial opportunity and a strategic necessity for the planet. I have always loved tackling giant, complex industrial puzzles, and clean energy tech is the ultimate puzzle right now.
Why is philanthropy such an integral part of your identity and legacy?
Stan Bharti: At the end of the day, true success is measured by the opportunities you leave behind for the next generation. For me, education is everything because it completely rewrote the script of my own life, taking me from India to some of the best schools in Europe and North America. I gave $10 million to Laurentian University to launch the Bharti School of Engineering, so bright, ambitious kids in Northern Ontario would have access to world-class training right in their backyard. Seeing what those students have achieved over the last 15 years is incredibly rewarding. We do the same thing globally through our foundation, whether it is protecting endangered wildlife or helping kids in underserved communities, because philanthropy is where you actually change lives.
With macro-trend changing faster than ever, how must the archetype of the global CEO evolve to survive the next decade?
Stan Bharti: The old-school, spreadsheet-only CEO is totally obsolete. Today, you need what I call a hybrid executioner. You have to be a leader who can comfortably talk about deep scientific disruption, geopolitical chaos, and social impact all in the same breath. You actually have to understand the tech driving your business, whether that is hydrogen grids or AI infrastructure, while at the same time navigating completely fractured politics on different continents. The executives who thrive tomorrow will be the ones who blend raw technical agility with genuine human empathy to build a business that solves real friction points for humanity.
