New Energy investment

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

He is the Fund Manager of Gresham House Energy Storage Fund plc, with assets under management (AUM) of over £500mn, and was, through 2020, also Fund Manager for the British Strategic Investment Fund (BSIF) strategy which grew AUM to £350mn 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.

Rupert has been the Managing Director of Gresham House Asset Management Ltd since September 2015. He is a member of the Group Management and Investment Committees.

Rupert has a proven track record of delivering significant value to shareholders and has over 32 years’ experience in asset management, private banking and wealth management, focusing on product innovation, investment management, business development, banking and wealth structuring.

Before joining Gresham House, Rupert was CEO and CIO of Schroders (UK) Private Bank for 11 years, and spent 17 years at Rothschild, where latterly he was Head of Private Clients for Rothschild Asset Management.

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 won 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.

Wayne is an Investment Director in our New Energy division and has 29 years of technical, commercial, stakeholder and general management experience in the energy sector.

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.

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.

Maxwell joined Gresham House in October 2022 and is a Condition Monitoring Engineer, responsible for controls, monitoring and reporting on 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 over 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 holds 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 14 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 three 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.

Sarah joined Gresham House in January 2023 as an Asset Manager in our New Energy team.

Sarah has over seven years of experience in the Renewable Energy industry, focused to date on Solar PV.

In her previous role, Sarah spent five years as a Senior Technical Manager assisting in the asset management for a 523MW solar portfolio. As part of her role she was responsible for overseeing the day to day performance of the assets, alongside developing projects focused on asset optimisation.

Sarah holds a BSc in Geological Sciences from the University of Leeds and an MSc in Environmental Strategy from the University of Surrey.

Carole oversees Gresham House’s renewable assets portfolio and acts as Fund Manager for one of the wind funds.

Carole joined Gresham House as part of the FIM Services Ltd integration, 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 several 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.

Koldo joined Gresham House in August 2022 as an O&M Manager in our New Energy division.

Koldo has over 15 years experience in the renewables industry. Prior to joining Gresham House, Koldo worked at Grupotec Renewables Ltd as a Construction Project Manager of a 12Mw plant in Dorset and more recently as an O&M Manager for a 300MW Solar PV plant. Prior to Grupotec, Koldo worked as a Project Manager of Solar PV plants and Solar thermal instillations in Barcelona.

Koldo holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from Universidad Publica de Navarra and an MSc in Renewable Energy from Universidad Politecnica de Cataluna, Barcelona.

Ana joined Gresham House in September 2022 and is responsible for implementing the EPCM structure and delivering the New Energy team’s project pipeline.

Ana is a multi-skilled professional with 12 years of experience delivering innovative, award-winning renewable energy projects in the UK.

Previously, Ana helped to establish quality management, project delivery, and commercial project functions at GRIDSERVE Sustainable Energy. She also successfully delivered the UK’s first Electric Forecourt and subsidy-free solar and battery storage hybrid projects with bi-facial panels and tracking technology. Before joining GRIDSERVE, Ana was part of the BELECTRIC projects team building utility-scale solar farms.

Elliot joined Gresham House in October 2022 to support the daily operations of the asset management team.

Previously, Elliot worked at Anesco Ltd as a Performance Analyst, where he was responsible for the operation and maintenance of 240MW of solar assets across the UK and Europe.

Elliot holds a BA (Hons) in Business Management from Regent’s University London.

Lefteris joined Gresham House in March 2023 and is responsible for sourcing and executing energy storage investment opportunities.

Lefteris has over 15 years of experience in infrastructure and energy transition investments. He has held principal investment and advisory roles with large institutions such as Columbia Threadneedle Investments, National Pension Service of South Korea (NPS), Macquarie, and Société Générale, as well as corporate and business development roles with Libra Group and Maple Power.

He is a seasoned investor who has worked across a range of sectors including solar PV, onshore and offshore wind, anaerobic digestion, and hydroelectric power.

Lefteris holds a MSc in Finance from Imperial College London and a BSc in Management Science from Athens University of Economics and Business.

Lucy joined Gresham House in October 2021 as an Asset Manager.

Prior to joining Gresham House, 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.

Tom Joined Gresham House in April 2022 as a Site Condition Monitoring Engineer and is now a Data Scientist in the New Energy division.

Before joining Gresham House, Tom completed an MPhil in Physics at the University of Bath with the thesis title “Towards Brillouin Enabled Photonic Switching and Quantum Memories”. During this time, he investigated the viability of two photonic devices for use in linear optic quantum computing platforms both theoretically and experimentally and developed a unique set of skills allowing for a wide variety of applications.

Prior to his time in Bath, Tom studied for a BSc in Physics at Aberystwyth University and an MSc in Diamond Science and Technology at the University of Warwick, during which time he completed research placements at Strathclyde University and the University of Oxford.