 Ekwunife N. Okoli is the Managing Director of Diageo Africa Regional Markets (ARM). Mr. Okoli has been a member of the Diageo Africa Executive Team since 2005. In his current role, Mr. Okoli is actively involved in Diageo's business, investment and interest in Africa and plays a key role in the design and development of the brewing sector, building sales, marketing and branding teams. Mr. Okoli joined Diageo in 1982 and has held various senior positions including Managing Director of Guinness Ghana Breweries Ltd., Guinness Cameroun and Guinness Nigeria Plc. Mr. Okoli holds a B.Sc. 1st class honours in Marketing and an MBA, both from Nigerian Universities.  Tory Frame is a London-based partner and head of Bain & Company’s U.K. and Ireland Consumer Products Practice. Ms. Frame specializes in “pleasure and leisure” consumer products and services and their commercial strategy, in particular advising companies on how to achieve growth through superior brand and customer strategies. She has led cases on branding, pricing and product launch, market entry strategy, in-store activation and sales force effectiveness programs. She has helped companies grow their share of market with these consumers in alcohol, tobacco, credit cards, fashion, private jets, jewellery, food and beauty. One of the FTSE’s 2012 “100 Women to Watch, Ms. Frame is the lead author of Bain’s influential “U.K. Shoppers and the Choices They Make” study on a range of U.K. product categories, from apparel, accessories and beauty to beverages, foods, tobacco and automobiles.  Dr. Slim Feriani joined Advance Emerging Capital in February 2005 from Martin Currie Investment Management Limited where he was a director and senior portfolio manager for the long only global emerging markets portfolios, hedge fund products in Asia, institutional portfolios in the Global Products Group and the global commodities sector. Before that he worked as a senior investment analyst on the Middle East and North Africa regions within the Emerging Markets Group at Nomura International in London. Dr. Feriani completed an MBA in Finance & Investments in 1989 and a Ph.D. on the same subject in 1995, both at George Washington University where, between 1989 and 1996, he taught Finance and International Finance. He is fluent in English, French and Arabic.  Juan Sartori is a Uruguayan-born financial entrepreneur. Mr. Sartori is founder and President of Union Group, which operates in Latin America across the agriculture, energy, forestry, infrastructure, minerals and real estate sectors. Previously, Mr. Sartori founded Union Capital Group, a Geneva based multi-strategy asset manager, which he managed from 2002 to 2008. Mr. Sartori is a CFA Charterholder, holds a Bachelor Degree in Business and Economics from Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Lausanne, and attended Harvard University, where he studied Economics and International Finance. Mr. Sartori speaks fluent English, French, Italian and Spanish.  frontier markets in Africa and Asia as well as the fixed income portfolio investing division. TLG has completed deals across sub-Saharan Africa notably in the field of healthcare. Past deals include investments in the WHO preapproved pharmaceutical plant QCIL (Uganda), healthcare facilities in West Africa and a fast-growing cartridge refilling and laptop repair company in India that aims to transmigrate its business to Africa. TLG's efforts in frontier markets was recognised in 2012 by Private Equity Africa for "Landmark Deal of the Decade" as well as in 2010 by a Brewin Dolphin and Red Ribbons joint initiative for contributions rendered towards socially impacting investments. Prior to TLG Capital, Mr. Latif was at Toronto Dominion, Nomura and DrKW in the capital markets division since 2002. Mr. Latif holds a Masters degree in Finance achieved at the age of 18 from Cass Business School. He currently sits on a Board of Trustees and furthermore has spoken at the Houses of Parliament, JP Morgan, TEDx and CNBC on various issues related to the financial industry such as Africa, Frontier Market PE and Fixed Income investing.  Mr Grant grew up in rural Kenya amidst the optimism of a newly independent country blended with the realities of farming in Africa. CDC, and some of their Kenya success stories, made an early impression on him. A natural appetite for fixing things led to a first career in engineering where Mr. Grant quickly found himself working on a problematic gold mine in Papua New Guinea and then building what remains as Kenya's largest hydro-electric scheme. The common challenge and success factor was people. Following an MBA at London Business School, the opportunity to work with people and capital led to a very enjoyable 13 year career at 3i, but outside of Africa. So when the opportunity to join CDC en route to becoming Actis presented itself back in 2001 Mr. Grant could not say no.  William Browder is the Founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, a leading global asset management firm specializing in emerging and frontier markets worldwide. The firm’s Russian product, the Hermitage Fund, was named the “2005 Fund of the Year” by EuroHedge. After eleven years of investing exclusively in Russia, Mr. Browder launched Hermitage Global in April 2007, a deep value public equity fund focusing on the Middle East and other emerging markets. Mr. Browder is a leading global shareholder rights activist and has been an outspoken fighter for better corporate governance at Russian and other emerging markets companies. He and Hermitage have been credited with a number of breakthroughs in improving corporate standards at major Russian companies, including Gazprom, Sberbank and Unified Energy Systems. Mr. Browder was the largest foreign investor in Russia until November 2005, when he was suddenly denied entry to the country and declared "a threat to national security" by the Russian government for exposing corruption at large Russian companies. Mr. Browder has been leading a worldwide campaign using media, political and legislative tools to expose the corruption, rule of law and human rights abuses committed by Russian government officials.  Mr. Li has 20 years previous experience in investment banking. Mr. Li started his banking career as an Asian High Yield Bond and Asian Foreign Exchange proprietary trader at Credit Lyonnais. With his Asia focus, he went on to head up distribution and co-investment strategies in the areas of listed and pre-IPO corporate high yield & distressed debts, equity-linked, debt-linked, mezzanine structured finance to global hedge funds and private equity funds. Serving as the Head of Department, he was responsible for the build out and leading of these businesses at Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse First Boston and JP Morgan Chase. Mr. Li's global experience in New York, London, Hong Kong & Tokyo is highlighted by the successful placement of the largest Asia Exchangeable Bond, which raised USD 1.25billion for SK Corp to securitize its stake in SK Telecom. This transaction helped Credit Suisse First Boston win IFR 2002 Equity Derivatives House of the Year. His outstanding record of raising equity-linked capital includes blue chips firms such as KT&G & Ssangyong Motor in Korea, Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Group in India, Takefuji in Japan, Hang Lung Properties & Yue Yuen in Hong Kong, United Overseas Bank in Singapore and Macronix, Ritek and Hon Hai in Taiwan. At Credit Suisse First Boston, Mr. Li was consulted by Government of Singapore Investment Corporation on the stock and credit impact from Global Hedge Funds’ participation on Convertible Bond Arbitrage. At JP Morgan Chase, Mr. Li was a pioneer in Asia High Yield and Distressed Debt portfolio reconstruction for several renowned Funds including Bankers Trust Global Credit Fund, Jardine Flemming and Peregrine Asset Management. At Barclays Capital, Mr. Li helped distribute a placement of USD2billion Sukuk Bonds for Nakheel Properties, the property development arm of Dubai. At the time, Sukuk Bonds was an innovative Islamic financial convertible instrument. Mr. Li has a Bachelors degree and a Diploma of Associateship of the Royal College of Science (ARCS) in Chemistry from Imperial College, London.  Kay Haigh is the CIO and founder of Avantium Investment Management (AIM). AIM was launched in October 2011 focusing exclusively on emerging markets. AIM’s Liquid Emerging Markets Macro Fund current AUM stand at USD620 million. Prior to setting up Avantium, Mr. Haigh was responsible for emerging markets at Deutsche Bank. Over the course of a 17 year career at Deutsche Bank, he worked in Singapore, London, New York and Latin America. Mr.Haigh holds an MPhil in Economics from Oxford University.  Sam is head of Macro Strategies within the Global Fixed Income team in Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM). As head of Macro Strategies, he leads the Global Rates, Fundamental Currency, Emerging Market Debt, and Commodities teams and is a member of the Fixed Income Strategy Group. Mr. Finkelstein joined Goldman Sachs in 1997 as an analyst in Fixed Income Asset Management. He worked on the Fixed Income portfolio risk and strategy team for two years and then became an emerging market portfolio manager. Mr. Finkelstein was named Managing Director in 2005 and Partner in 2010. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Finkelstein worked as a foreign exchange trader at Union Bank of Switzerland. Mr. Finkelstein earned an MBA from the Stern School of Business at New York University and a BA in Economics and Mathematics from Yale University in 1996.  Ali Akay is the Chief Investment Officer of Carrhae Capital, Mr. Akay was born and raised in Turkey and has spent the past decade focusing on emerging markets. Last year he set up Carrhae Capital, and in December launched a non-directional emerging markets equities hedge fund, with a USD150m seed investment from the Blackstone Group. Before setting up Carrhae, Mr. Akay ran the largest book at SAC Capital Advisors' London office and was the only European member of the firm's global investment committee. During his time at SAC, between August 2008 and June 2011, he delivered annualised gains of 21.58%.  David Bloom is the Global Head of FX Strategy of HSBC and has been with the company for twenty years. Before taking up his current post, Mr. Bloom was an international economist with a particular focus on the UK and US. He has also had some experience in equity strategy, equity sales and equity analysis. Following his MSC, Mr. Bloom joined James Capel (1992) now HSBC until the present time. He has worked in various roles during his time at HSBC, including UK Economist, and US and Canadian Economist. Mr. Bloom joined HSBC on the graduate programme. Mr. Bloom arrived in London in 1988 after completing an honours degree from Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg. He then worked his way through his masters degree in economics at Birkbeck College London.  Ms. Koch is a senior portfolio strategist and chief of staff for the Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) Office of the Chairman. Her responsibilities include developing and communicating GSAM’s growth markets strategy. Ms. Koch is also the EMEA co-head of the Veterans Interest Forum and serves on GSAM’s Client Engagement Group. Previously, Ms. Koch was head of the Fundamental Equity Client Portfolio Management team in EMEA, a position she held for two years. Prior to that, she was a client portfolio manager with responsibility for emerging market equity strategies. Earlier in her career, Ms. Koch was a financial analyst on a Private Wealth Management team in Chicago, where she focused on equity portfolios. She joined Goldman Sachs in 2002 as an analyst and was named managing director in 2011. Ms. Koch earned a BA, magna cum laude, in English and Economics from the University of Notre Dame in 2002.  Adam Robert Green is senior reporter for This is Africa, a bimonthly publication from the Financial Times. Previously he worked at the International Growth Centre at the London School of the Economics. He has a masters in development studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, and his writing has been published by the China Post, the Middle East Institute and Daily News Egypt.  Dr. Linda Yueh is a leading expert on the Chinese economy, and is an economist, broadcaster and best-selling author. She is a Fellow in Economics at Oxford University, Adjunct Professor of Economics at the London Business School, and Visiting Professor of Economics at Peking University. Dr. Yueh directs the China Growth Centre (CGC) at St. Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, and is an associate of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) and IDEAS: International Affairs, Diplomacy & Strategy research centre, both at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Previously, she was an international corporate lawyer and Economics Editor at Bloomberg TV, where she hosted "Economic Edge". From April, she will be the BBC Chief Business Correspondent and present a new weekly business programme on BBC World. Dr. Yueh has published widely and is the Series Editor of the Routledge Economic Growth and Development Series. Her books include: Macroeconomics (co-authored with Graeme Chamberlin) which is a recommended textbook of the UK Government Economic Service, Globalisation and Economic Growth in China (co-edited with Yang Yao), The Law and Economics of Globalisation: New Challenges for a World in Flux (editor), The Future of Asian Trade and Growth: Economic Development with the Emergence of China (editor), China and Globalisation: Critical Concepts in Economics (editor), Enterprising China: Business, Economic, and Legal Developments Since 1979, and The Economy of China. China's Growth: The Making of an Economic Superpower is out on 28th March 2013. She has advised the World Bank, European Commission, Asian Development Bank, World Economic Forum (WEF), among others. Dr. Yueh is a Non-Executive Director of JPMorgan Asian Investment Trust plc and Baillie Gifford's Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust plc, Board Member of London & Partners, the official promotion agency of London, Advisory Board Member of The Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), and International Trade Advisory Group member at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC).  Douglas Brew is the External Affairs Director for Unilever’s Sub-Saharan Africa business responsible for political strategy, corporate and external relations. He also works with global procurement teams on sustainable sourcing and agricultural development. He joined Unilever from Brussels after several years working with trade negotiating teams and on African issues, including a spell as a Member of the EU Trade Commissioner’s Cabinet. Before that he worked for the UK Department for International Development in the UK and Southern Africa. He has worked extensively in South Asia and Africa, has degrees in Engineering and Environmental Management and is a full member of the UK Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management.  Aaron Thomas is the CEO and founder of Brasilian iron ore junior producer, Oakmont Resources and has experience in the execution and implementation of mining projects in SE Asia and South America with a range of commodities from iron ore, lithium, REE, copper and gold in both listed and private companies. Oakmont Resources operates its main iron ore mine in Bahia State in Brasil, having shipped product to China via commodity trader Vitol, the world's largest commodity trader.  Mr. Mordi is a corporate finance and equity advisory professional who began his career as an Equities Analyst for Hardman & Co. Ltd. where he focused on UK AIM stocks. Over the course of his career, his expertise in Investment Research and Advisory Services led him to work for a number of leading firms including Intersec Research Corporation and Société Générale Asset Management (SGAM). After a period as Director of Corporate Finance and Advisory Services for Nex Rubica, he returned to Nigeria. He was Head of Infrastructure Financing at First City Monument Bank, prior to his current position as a Director of CBO Capital Partners. Mr. Mordi holds a Philosophy degree from King's College, University of London.  Dr Harris is Director, Resource Assessment for Rio Tinto Business Development, and he has been at Rio Tinto for more than 30 years. Until 2008 he was also Managing Director, African Projects and Managing Director Simandou at Rio Tinto Iron Ore. From 1996-2004 he held the post of ED, Africa/Europe Regional Exploration, and from 1989-1996 he was Managing Director of Rio Tinto's South American Exploration. Prior to this role he has also been Exploration Manager of Scotland and Europe and Regional Manager of North & South America between 1981-1989. Before joining Rio Tinto, Dr. Harris also worked at Alcoa Mining Co, Hanna Mining Co, Fluor Mining & Metals and Gold Fields Mining Co. Dr. Mike Harris received his PhD in Mining Geology from the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College in 1979. His academic background also includes a BSc, Geology (Tulane University, 1971) and MSc, Ore Deposits (Stanford University, 1974). He is also a Fellow of the Society of Economic Geologists and Fellow of the Geological Society.  Helios Investment Partners is an Africa-focused Private Equity firm which operates a family of funds and their related co-investment entities, aggregating more than USD1 billion in capital commitments. Prior to joining Helios, Mr. Obi was a Partner for several years at Aureos Capital in London. He started his investment career at CDC and also worked at Actis and Dynegy and currently sits on the advisory board of Maris Capital. Mr. Obi has an MBA from the London Business School.  Robert is a partner in the Corporate department and specialises in private equity, corporate finance and M&A. He also chairs the firm's UK China group. He advises on private equity and venture capital transactions for investing institutions and management teams. He has acted for many years for public and private companies and brokers on IPOs and secondary issues. The sectors in which Robert has transactional experience include software and technology, financial services, insurance, business services, training and education, real estate and natural resources. He has been recommended in the Legal 500 for M&A. A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he qualified as a solicitor in 1989. William Browder is the Founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, a leading global asset management firm specializing in emerging and frontier markets worldwide. The firm’s Russian product, the Hermitage Fund, was named the "2005 Fund of the Year" by EuroHedge. After eleven years of investing exclusively in Russia, Mr. Browder launched Hermitage Global in April 2007, a deep value public equity fund focusing on the Middle East and other emerging markets. Mr. Browder is a leading global shareholder rights activist and has been an outspoken fighter for better corporate governance at Russian and other emerging markets companies. He and Hermitage have been credited with a number of breakthroughs in improving corporate standards at major Russian companies, including Gazprom, Sberbank and Unified Energy Systems. Mr Browder was the largest foreign investor in Russia until November 2005, when was suddenly denied entry to the country and declared "a threat to national security" by the Russian government for exposing corruption at large Russian companies. In 2008 Mr Browder's lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered a massive fraud committed by Russian government officials that involved the theft of US$230 million of state taxes. He testified against the government officials who had committed the crime and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned by the same officers he had exposed. He spent a year in prison under horrific detention conditions, was repeatedly denied medical treatment, and died in prison on November 16, 2009. Since that time, Mr Browder has been leading a worldwide campaign using media, political and legislative tools to expose the corruption, rule of law and human rights abuses committed by Russian government officials. Thanks to this campaign, the ‘Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act' was signed into US law by President Obama in December 2012. The Act imposes visa entry bans and asset freezes on any of the Russian officials involved in the human rights abuses of Sergei Magnitsky, as well as on other gross violators of human rights in the Russian Federation. Mr. Browder is currently campaigning to have similar Magnitsky laws passed within the European Union, working with individual states to implement policies against corrupt officials so that there are real repercussions for those who break the law and commit human rights abuses. |
