New Energy & Sustainable Infrastructure 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 joined Gresham House in June 2020 and is the Managing Director of the Sustainable Infrastructure division and is a Fund Manager of BSIF. Peter is also a member of the Gresham House Sustainable Investment Committee. Prior to Gresham House, he led the investment and exit of the Sustainable Infrastructure focused Environmental Capital Fund (ECF) for SEP, one of Europe’s most successful VC firms. He has over 20 years of public and private equity investment and funds management experience and has invested into and exited over 170 infrastructure and technology companies across all sectors with an equity value of over £1.3bn and capital value of c.£5bn.

Prior to SEP where ECF achieved top-quartile returns, Peter was co-founder of renewables developer and investor EIDC; Team Head of secondary infrastructure and renewables at Land Securities Trillium; a partner of the PPP/PFI focused private equity fund SMIF (now Semperian) which exited with a top-quartile return; and a founding member of Challenger’s infrastructure team. Peter has had board member roles on over 50 investee companies. He is also a judge and mentor of the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership (CISL) Accelerator and the CleanTech Challenge. Peter is an active investor in early-stage sustainability companies.

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

Bozkurt joined Hazel Capital (now Gresham House New Energy) in 2008 as a Partner and Portfolio Manager. He co-manages the Gresham House New Energy VCTs and sources and executes new opportunities, covering transaction negotiation, due diligence and contract negotiation. He dedicated the early part of his career to funding and advising companies in the telecommunications 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 25 years’ principal investment, advisory and business-building experience in the clean energy, telecommunications and technology industries, and holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College London.

Ed has been an Investment Director at Gresham House since February 2019. Ed has been working with growth companies since 2000 as a corporate finance adviser, COO, CFO and investor. Prior to joining 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 24 years of technical, commercial, stakeholder and general management experience in the energy sector. Before joining FIM Services Ltd, where he served as COO prior to their acquisition, Wayne was Onshore Wind Development and Construction Director for RWE Innogy.

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

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.

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.

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.

Ed works on the origination, appraisal, execution and management of renewable energy investments. Prior to joining Gresham House, Ed worked with KPMG, qualifying as a Chartered Accountant, before moving into commercial finance with Siemens L&A and then corporate finance with MacIntyre Hudson LLP, where he specialised in business start-ups and mid-market transactions.

Ed holds both a first class BSc in Economics from the University of Manchester and the Investment Management Certificate, and is a registered adviser with the Financial Conduct Authority.

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.

Izzy is an Associate Director at Gresham House, leading on commercial and carbon forestry investment appraisals in the UK and internationally. Izzy joined Gresham House in May 2018 following the acquisition of FIM Services Ltd. Prior to joining Gresham House, Izzy worked for over six years in commercial real estate advisory, building out investment and agency team platforms at Cushman & Wakefield, Knight Frank, and Strutt and Parker, forming and executing strategic and complex projects. Prior to this Izzy worked as an Investment Analyst at European equity hedge fund Libra Equity. Izzy is the youngest visiting professor at the prestigious IEB University in Madrid, teaching the CFA curriculum. Izzy has over 10 years of experience, is a CFA charterholder and has an MSc in Finance from the University of Exeter. He is also fluent in Spanish and Dutch.

James Armstrong is an Investment Associate, working across both forestry and renewables at Gresham House.  He joined in May 2018 following the acquisition of FIM Services Ltd.  James is focused on the acquisition of new assets and takes an active role in the day to day management of the portfolio. Prior to joining Gresham House, he worked at J.P. Morgan, RWE Supply and Trading and most recently spent four years 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 with a BA in Business Administration, he is a holder of the Investment Management Certificate and is enrolled as a Level II candidate in the CFA program.

James joined Gresham House in November 2018 having previously been at Livingbridge. Prior to this he worked in TMT audit at EY for 3 years, where he qualified as a chartered accountant.

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

John has been Technical Director at Gresham House since November 2017. He joined the firm following the acquisition of Hazel Capital and is responsible for the technical development and optimisation of energy storage assets, and technical support for existing solar and wind assets. Prior to his experience at Hazel Capital, John worked in the UK solar sector, initiating O&M and asset management for a number of ground-mounted solar PV asset portfolios with a total generation capacity of over 600 MW. Prior to this, he managed the operational control, trading and grid-interface of a UK wind portfolio at RWE/Npower with over 1 GW generation capacity. Before moving to London in 2011, John worked with the Irish utility ESB, in management roles in a 400 MW CCGT plant, and in trading/commercial optimisation of CCGT assets in the UK and Ireland. John is a Chartered Engineer with over 20 years of experience and holds a BE in Mechanical Engineering from University College Dublin, an MSc in Operations Management from Dublin City University and an MBA from the Open University.

Josh is an Investment Manager focusing on forestry acquisitions and the fund management of the Forestry Limited Partnerships. He holds a BA (Hons) from Reading University, is an ACA chartered accountant and is currently studying towards the Investment Management Certificate.

Previously, Josh was awarded a place on PricewaterhouseCoopers’ prestigious Flying Start degree programme before joining the firm full time as a Senior Associate, specialising in financial services. He then moved onto Hazlewoods LLP to focus on mergers and acquisitions concentrating on corporate due diligence.

Matthew joined Gresham House in July 2020 as a Commercial Asset Manager.

Prior to this, Matthew had worked in the energy industry for 7 years, initially in Oil & Gas before transitioning to renewable / clean energy with the latter period focused on maximising revenue streams available to energy storage assets.

Matthew holds an MEng in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London and an MSc in Renewable Energy from the University of Reading.

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

Peter has twelve 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. Peter holds a BA in geography from the University of Oxford.

Rich joined Gresham House in June 2020 as Technical Asset Manager. His career started as an engineering apprentice at Drax power station and has progressed through plant operations, maintenance and engineering, into asset and plant management. With extensive industry experience, he has been exposed to many different business units and has been heavily involved in a variety of major engineering projects including upgrades to failing assets and completion and commissioning of state of the art new build energy-from-waste sites.

He has over 25 years’ experience in the Energy industry of which five years were spent trading UK power and gas for International Power, London and two years trading UK and Ireland power and gas for ESBi, Dublin.

Ruth has been an Associate Director at Gresham House since February 2021, delivering investments in sustainable infrastructure, prior to which she supported the team as a consultant from April 2020.

Ruth has 18 years of 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.

Sharan has been an Investment Associate at Gresham House since April 2021. He spent 4 years at Octopus Investments, where he focused on renewable energy investment transactions (£165m closed) and fundraising (£600m closed). He has 4 years’ experience in finance, with a BSc from King’s College London in Business Management and a MSc from Imperial College London in Economics and Strategy.

He has 4 years’ experience working on a technology start-up, which he co-founded while at university.

He used to play chess for Great Britain.

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.

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 is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and has a first class BSc (Hons) in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Bath.

Prior to joining Gresham House, Tom worked for Polar Capital for 5 years on both the investment and operational side, during which time he completed the IMC. Following a sustainability direction, he designed and built a rural indoor farm, selling the produce to local restaurants and farmers markets. He graduated in 2010 from the University of Edinburgh with a BSc (Hons) in Scientific Geography.