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 and Fund Manager for the British Strategic Investment Fund (BSIF) strategy. Ben started his fund management career at Lazard Asset Management in 1994 and worked there for nine years, He founded Hazel Capital (now Gresham House New Energy) in April 2007, serving as Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer.

He is responsible for the origination and execution of investment opportunities alongside on-going portfolio management. Prior to founding Hazel Capital, he was a co-founder of Cantillon Capital, where he managed a $1bn equity hedge fund focused on global technology, media and telecom. Ben currently serves as a director of over 40 companies and until recently was the non-executive chairman of Oxis Energy, a UK-advanced battery power company. He has 26 years of investment experience and holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College.

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.

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 Investment Manager 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 Associate 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 June 2020 and is a Fund Manager of the British Strategic Investment Fund (BSIF) strategy sub fund, BSI Infrastructure, where he leads investments in sustainability infrastructure. Prior to Gresham House, he was an active angel investor and entrepreneur. He has over 19 years of public and private equity investment and funds management experience and has invested into and exited over 160 infrastructure and technology companies across all sectors with an equity value of over £1.3bn and capital value of c.£5bn.

Peter most recently led the investment and exit of the Environmental Capital Fund (ECF) for SEP, one of Europe’s most successful VC firms. Prior to SEP, Peter was co-founder of renewables developer 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); and a founding member of Challenger’s infrastructure team. Peter has had board member roles on nearly 50 investee companies where the majority of his professional career has focused on UK investments. He is also a judge and mentor of the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership (CISL) Accelerator and the CleanTech Challenge.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tristan joined Gresham House in June 2020 as an Investment Associate within the Infrastructure team.

Tristan joined from Neptune Energy, a private equity-backed energy company, where he was Business Development Lead and focused on the origination and execution of acquisition opportunities and corporate strategy. Prior to this, he was part of the Investment Banking team at Scotiabank, where he worked on mergers and acquisitions in the energy and infrastructure sectors.

Tristan holds a BA (Hons) in Accounting & Finance from Durham University and is a CFA level II candidate.