New Energy & Sustainable Infrastructure

Ben has been Managing Director and Head of the Gresham House New Energy division since November 2017.

He is also the Fund Manager of Gresham House Energy Storage Fund plc, with assets under management (AUM) of over £500m, and was, through 2020, also Fund Manager for the British Strategic Investment Fund (BSIF) Strategy which grew AUM to £350m under his leadership. Ben started his fund management career at Lazard Asset Management in 1994 and worked there for nine years. He later founded Hazel Capital in April 2007, serving as Managing Partner and CIO and which became Gresham House New Energy on the acquisition of Hazel Capital’s business activities in November 2017.

Prior to founding Hazel Capital, he was a co-founder of Cantillon Capital, where he managed a US$1bn equity hedge fund focused on global technology, media and telecom. Ben currently serves as a director of over 50, mostly project, companies. He has 27 years of investment experience and holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College.

Peter is Managing Director of Gresham House’s Sustainable Infrastructure division and Fund Manager for our British Sustainable Infrastructure Fund (BSIF) strategy. He is also a member of the Gresham House Sustainability Executive Committee.

Prior to Gresham House, Peter led the investment and exit of the Sustainable Infrastructure-focused Environmental Capital Fund (ECF) for SEP, one of Europe’s most successful VC firms.

With over 21 years of public and private equity investment, development and fund management experience, including two top-decile infrastructure fund exits, he has invested into and exited over 200 infrastructure and technology companies across all sectors with an equity value of over £1.7bn and capital value of c.£5.5bn.

Peter has had board member roles on over 50 investee companies and is a judge and mentor of the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership (CISL) Accelerator and the CleanTech Challenge. Peter is also an active investor in early-stage sustainability companies.

He holds a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) with honours and two further Bachelor degrees in Finance (BFin) and Commerce (BCom), all from the University of Adelaide, and is a graduate of CISL’s Business Sustainability Management programme.

Rupert Robinson has been the Managing Director of Gresham House Asset Management Ltd since September 2015. Before joining Gresham House, Rupert was CEO and CIO of Schroders (UK) Private Bank for 11 years and prior to that spent 17 years at Rothschild where he was latterly Head of Private Clients at Rothschild Asset Management. Rupert has a proven track record of delivering significant value to shareholders. He has over 31 years of experience in asset management, private banking and wealth management, focusing on product innovation, investment management, business development, banking and wealth structuring. He is a member of the Group Management and Investment Committees.

Bozkurt joined the New Energy team in 2017 as an Investment Director, with the acquisition of Hazel Capital. He is a senior member of the team managing the Gresham House Energy Storage Fund and specifically looks after procurement, contracting, delivery and the evaluation of new opportunities. He also manages the Gresham House New Energy VCTs that have a portfolio of solar and wind assets. He has been closely involved in the acquisition, financing, construction and management of over 800MWs of energy storage assets, and over 200MWs of solar and wind assets.

Bozkurt dedicated the early part of his career to funding and advising companies in the telecommunications, media and technology industries whilst in roles at Nomura, Salomon Brothers, Bowman Capital and Deloitte & Touche.

In 2002 he co-founded and built New Energy Finance (NEF), which became the leading provider of data, research and analysis to investors in the global cleantech industry. NEF was acquired by Bloomberg in December 2009.

He has 29 years’ worth of principal investment, advisory and business-building experience in the clean energy, telecommunications and technology industries.

Bozkurt holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College London.

Ed joined Gresham House in February 2019. He has been working with growth companies since 2000 as a corporate finance adviser, COO, CFO and investor.

Prior to Gresham House, Ed was focusing on renewable energy and infrastructure at Downing LLP, where he was Head of the Energy and Infrastructure team, managing over £400m of assets under management. From December 2010 to June 2013, he worked as an Investment Director for 350 Investment Partners, the fund managers of the Carbon Trust venture investments and the North West Fund for Energy and Environmental. Prior to that Ed was working at Bridges Ventures from 2008 to 2010 where he began focusing on social impact and sustainable investing.

Ed has experience in originating, negotiating and managing venture, growth and infrastructure transactions and actively managing a portfolio of investments through to profitable exit. He has 25 years of experience, holds an MA in Economics from Cambridge and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Andersen in 1998.

Wayne has 28 years of technical, commercial, stakeholder and general management experience in the energy sector and is an Investment Director in the New Energy division of Gresham House.

Before joining Gresham House, Wayne served as COO at FIM Services Ltd, and prior to that Wayne was an Onshore Wind Development and Construction Director for RWE Innogy.

He has overseen the construction of 17 wind farms (~400MW) and the sale of 12 wind farms (~200MW) over the past 12 years. He has also represented the industry on aviation matters as a director and vice chair of the Aviation Investment Fund Company Ltd.

Wayne is a Chartered Engineer and has a PhD in Engineering from the University of Sheffield. Wayne is also a registered adviser with the Financial Conduct Authority.

Maxwell joined Gresham House in October 2022 and is a Condition Monitoring Engineer, responsible for monitoring and reporting the general condition of the bulk battery storage system.

Maxwell previously worked as a Power System Engineer at Ghana Grid Company.

Maxwell has a Bachelors’ in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and a Masters’ in Renewable Energy from the University of Aberdeen.

James joined Gresham House in May 2018, following the acquisition of FIM Services Ltd.

James is Fund Manager of Gresham House Solar Distribution LLP. James takes an active role in the day-to-day management of the fund including reporting, asset management, capital rising, acquisition of new assets and conducting valuations. Prior to joining Gresham House, he worked at J.P. Morgan, RWE Supply and Trading and latterly at Computershare Investor Services as an Equity Dealer, managing a range of global share plans and option schemes on behalf of corporate clients.

James has ten years of experience in financial services and holds a BA (Hons) in Business Administration from the University of Plymouth. He has also obtained the Investment Management Certificate and is enrolled as a Level II candidate in the CFA program.

Based in our Oxford office, Suzy works in the asset management team for our renewables portfolio. Suzy has been involved in the construction, financing and operational management of over 100 MW of onshore wind and solar assets on behalf of investors.

Previously, Suzy worked as a Senior Investment Analyst for Sun Life Financial of Canada and Lincoln Financial Group.

Suzy has a first-class BSc (Hons) in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Bath.

Peter joined Gresham House in January 2021 and is responsible for the unsubsidised renewables and collocation strategy within the New Energy team.

Peter has 13 years’ energy investment experience. Prior to joining Gresham House, Peter was an Investment Director at Foresight Group, where he worked for seven years. Whilst at Foresight, Peter focused on the European renewable energy sector, leading deals across the full project lifecycle (development capital, greenfield, brownfield and exit processes) and actively managing assets post-investment.

From 2012-2014, Peter was part of the Mergers & Acquisitions Team at Gazprom Marketing & Trading, working on power generation, metering and energy supply transactions. He started his career in PwC’s Deals Strategy team, advising financial and strategic buyers in the energy sector.

Peter is passionate about the need for further renewable energy deployment and has a track-record working with developers on complex greenfield projects.

He holds a BA in Geography from the University of Oxford.

James is an Investment Manager at Gresham House.  James moved to the New Energy team in 2019 after joining Gresham House in 2018 as part of Gresham House Ventures, having previously been at Livingbridge since 2016.

James’ current role covers a broad range of work across fund management and new investments, primarily focused on energy storage and renewables. Amongst other things he is responsible for modelling for the energy storage fund, both at fund level and for new investments drawing on his experience and understanding of BESS markets. Prior to joining the New Energy team, he worked as an Analyst covering mostly early-stage companies in the Venture Capital and Equity Fund vehicles as part of Gresham House Ventures. This role provided experience with investment decisions across a variety of markets as well as exposure to growth companies and management of quoted investment vehicles.

His career started in TMT audit at EY where he spent 3 years and qualified as a chartered accountant.

James holds a first-class Master’s degree in Mathematics from Durham University.

Fernando joined Gresham House in May 2021 and is focused on the design, development and deployment of processes and procedures that allow the New Energy team to increase MW under management each year.

Fernando has 15 years’ experience in the Renewable Energy sector, specifically in the Solar PV industry. Prior to Gresham House, he was Global Head of Technical for a 2.2GW Solar PV portfolio at WiseEnergy (Next Energy Group company), focused on the operation of their Solar PV assets and increasing overall revenues.

Fernando holds a BEng in Industrial Engineering from the University of Castilla-La Mancha and an MSc in Energy and Sustainability with Electrical Power Engineering from the University of Southampton. He also holds a Global Executive MBA from IESE Business School, Barcelona.

Carole is responsible for the asset management of Gresham House’s renewable portfolio and also acts as fund manager for one of the wind funds. Carole joined Gresham House as part of the FIM Services Ltd integrations, and has been involved in the origination, financing, construction and management of all of the previously FIM-branded renewable assets.

Prior to joining FIM, Carole worked across a number of sectors including technology, software and travel as a Finance and Operations Director following qualification as a Chartered Management Accountant.

Stevie joined Gresham House in January 2018 and works on both public and private transactions across the full range of funds, spending the majority of time working on the British Strategic Investment Fund in the Sustainable Infrastructure team.

Prior to Gresham House, Stevie worked for Lloyds Banking Group in their Leveraged Finance Team, following the completion of the graduate scheme where she gained exposure to a wide range of Capital Market products.

Stevie holds a BA (Hons) in Economics from Durham University and has passed CFA Level II.

Chloe joined Gresham House in July 2019, having spent over three years in infrastructure operations at Oxford Capital. Prior to Oxford Capital, she was Acquisitions Manager at Inazin and a Project Officer at TRW, a ZF Group company. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Zoology from the University of Nottingham and an MBA from RAC, Cirencester.

Ana Janine joined Gresham House in September 2021 as an Investment Manager in our Sustainable Infrastructure team.

Ana was previously at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where she worked on private equity deals across a range of sectors. Prior to this, her varied career included four years in the Portuguese political sphere as a member of the Coimbra Municipal Assembly, and time as a tax lawyer and consultant with Baker Tilly and Deloitte.

Ana is an HEC Paris MBA graduate with a degree in Law from Universidade de Coimbra.

Ruth joined Gresham House on a permanent basis in February 2021, delivering investments in sustainable infrastructure. Prior to this she had supported the team as a consultant from April 2020.

Ruth has 20 years’ infrastructure experience through her first career as a projects lawyer, during which she worked on infrastructure projects both large and small across a range of sectors, including the £3bn Greater Manchester Waste PFI Project. Over the last 10 years, Ruth’s focus has been supporting funders and developers on renewables, waste and social infrastructure projects from inception, through construction, operation and to secondary market disposal.

Prior to joining Gresham House, Ruth spent 15 years at Ashfords LLP where she was a senior partner who founded and was the head of the Projects Team. Ruth’s other leadership roles included acting as the head of the Energy and Waste Sector Team and she spent 3 years as a member of the firm’s management board.

Ruth trained and qualified at Wragge & Co (now Gowling WLR) and holds an LLB (Hons) from Birmingham University.

Gareth has been an Investment Director at Gresham House since November 2017. He joined the company following the acquisition of Hazel Capital where he was a Partner. Gareth is responsible for executing investments, particularly acquisitions, disposals and limited recourse financings of pre-and-post commissioned renewables projects. Prior to joining Hazel Capital, he worked at Barclays Capital from 2001 to 2009, latterly as a Vice President for Barclays Natural Resource Investments, a c.US$1.5bn captive private equity fund investing in natural resources and renewable energy. Prior to that, he worked in the Structured Capital Markets divisions of Barclays Capital and Deutsche Bank, handling the acquisition and disposal of various asset-based companies. He started his career in infrastructure project finance at NatWest Markets, advising on and financing a number of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) / Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects. Gareth has over 20 years of experience and holds an MBA from Imperial College Business School, an MSc in Engineering Project Management and a BEng in Civil Engineering, both from the University of Manchester.

Sharan joined Gresham House in April 2021. Prior to this he spent four years at Octopus Investments, where he focused on renewable energy investment transactions (£165m closed) and fundraising (£600m closed).

He has five years’ experience in finance, with a BSc (Hons) in Business Management from King’s College London and an MSc from Imperial College London in Economics and Strategy.

He also has four years’ experience working on a technology start-up, which he co-founded while at university.

Sharan used to play chess for Great Britain.

Lucy joined Gresham House in October 2021 as Asset Manager.

Lucy spent two years working at Downing LLP in their infrastructure asset management team where she held the roles of both Portfolio Analyst and Portfolio Executive and was responsible for all subsidy and offtake agreements across the portfolio. She also worked across the Gas Peaker and Storage portfolios, creating commercial dashboards and assisting with capacity market contracts, RTM tenders and the implementation of Dynamic Containment.

Prior to this, Lucy completed a placement year at a Chartered Accountants firm prior to graduating from Loughborough University with a BSc in Mathematics with Economics.

Charlie is an Investment Director in the Gresham House New Energy team. His current role began in February 2021, following a year in the team as a contractor. He is responsible for executing investments in infrastructure projects such as energy storage systems, whether acquired before construction or when already operational.

Charlie has extensive experience in the development, funding and asset management of distributed energy infrastructure projects assisting both investment managers and project developers at every stage of bringing their projects to fruition. He has worked on projects in a wide range of technologies including solar PV, hydroelectric power, anaerobic digestion, combined heat and power, thermal heat networks, gas peaking and grid-scale battery storage.

He started his career over 20 years ago as a commercial solicitor before transitioning to renewable energy, working with investment management firms for the last nine years.

Charlie studied science of materials at Trinity College Dublin and has an MBA from INSEAD, France.

Paul has been in construction since 1986 and held Director roles since 1998 and involved in renewable energy since 2010.

Prior to joining Gresham House Paul has held roles of Head of Energy at Balfour Beatty plc and Managing Director UK at Conergy, a global provider of large-scale solar PV projects. He has 35 years professional experience (construction).

Paul has previously sat on the route map working group feeding into the Green Construction Board chaired by Paul Morrell, Governments first Chief Construction Adviser. He was also a member of the British PV Association Executive Committee.

Paul has numerous Ministerial roundtables with Ministers including Ed Davey, Greg Barker and Amber Rudd. Presented at numerous industry events including ECO Build, DECC Forum events and Clean Energy Live.

In his private life Paul is President of Leigh & Bransford Badger FC.