Work Experience 09/11-Current: ***** Capital ***** ***** LLC, London, UK/New York, USA: Director, Investment Banking
• ***** Capital is an Emerging ***** (EM) focused boutique that specializes in primary debt (senior and subordinated/mezzanine) and private equity placements for its clientele as well as offering advisory.
• Lead and support junior colleagues in structuring complex private equity and debt (private placements) transactions in in Africa, Asia and Emerging Europe as well as managing our EMEA investor base.
• Currently managing a pipeline of transactions of approx. USD150m covering a range of Corporate and Financial Institution clients with a focus on the following sectors: Infrastructure & Project Finance; Financial Institutions (Including Microfinance & Non-Banking Financial Institutions); IT & Telecoms.
• Involved in the structuring and marketing of ***** ’s flagship EM special opportunities fund that is intended to be launched in the coming months via its asset management arm.
05/ ***** /11: Standard Chartered Bank, London, UK: Director, Financial Institutions Group
• Headed origination and coverage for European Sovereign and Supranational Institutions, managing 28 clients with revenue generation responsibilities on both sides of the balance sheet.
• The primary client segments in the SSA segment within SCB consist of bilateral and multilateral development banks/DFIs, ministries of finance (development departments) and export credit agencies (ECAs). All client segments are core to SCB’s strategy given their strong focus on emerging ***** .
• On the liabilities side, principle areas of support focused on the Financial ***** and DCM space given the SSA segment’s core needs. Specific achievements included leading a strategic initiative to promote the local currency (non-G10) bond product given that leading development banks such as EIB and KfW have been pioneers in funding across multiple exotic (predominantly Asian and African) currencies as well as seeking to support broader EM bond market development and advisory. Regards FM, the high volume investments the SSA segment make in EM meant that there was significant opportunity to provide exotic cross currency swap solutions (deliverable or NDFs) as well as interest rate hedging.
• Within Transaction Banking, aside from payments and security services (largely aimed at the significant private equity investments that some of the development banks have in EM), I focused on developing trade finance risk partnerships which enable the Bank to undertake balance sheet management while fundamentally remaining committed to provide scarce funding to promote trade in weaker ***** in Africa and Asia.
• On the asset coverage side, sourced both Development Banks and ECAs as prime investors, co-lenders and guarantors in exotic primary emerging market loan and capital market transactions. Covered various asset classes including project, infra finance and export finance; FI, Corporates and SME financing; trade finance and microfinance.
• In 2010/11, used European ECAs in 17 transactions worth over USD 5bn. Typically ECAs are monoline guarantors of up to 90% of originated structured and export finance transactions with a link back to the ECA’s home country.
• In 2010/11, transactions of USD2bn sourced through DFIs. The DFIs specialize in all mentioned asset classes and have taken part in senior, subordinated and mezzanine/private equity financing structures in core ***** in Africa (Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and S Africa) and Asia (SEA + India) as well as Turkey. Convinced DFIs to extend investment to bond and ABS investments by demonstrating link back to their core investment asset classes to fulfill their development mandate.


09/ ***** /10: Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO), The Hague, Netherlands: Investment Officer Capital *****

• The FMO is the second largest bilateral development finance bank in the world (Portfolio of USD 7bln covering 60+ nations) focused purely on private sector development.
• Helped set up the Capital ***** (under Financial ***** Division) department of the FMO in Jan 2008. The desk focused on a new management initiative to facilitate capital market development via active investments and acting as an arranger and/or advisor, for corporates or financial institutions seeking to gain access to the cross border or domestic capital ***** across our ***** mandate
• Co-managed a portfolio of approx USD 150mn. Within that portfolio have led or been in deal-teams investing into predominantly subordinated debt/mezzanine (via funded or guarantee structures) in the following sectors; financial institutions/SMEs, corporate, trade finance, project and export finance and microfinance. The size of our team and breadth of our mandate meant that we were able to execute a number of very in ***** tive transactions including: Supporting the Mexican mortgage market by providing a subordinated guarantee on a domestic RMBS with leading Sofole/Mortage finance provider; Remittance and Trade Future Flow Securitization in Peru with top 4 Bank; Infrastructure bonds as part of PPI scheme in India;; Partial Credit Guarantee on Domestic MTN/bond for No. 2 SA Microfinance Provider.
• As an arranger, the CM desk worked on a bespoke basis and transactional experience included: working with a leading S. African Taxi Finance provider in creating a tranched asset backed loan structure to reduce overall funding costs; One of the earliest securitization of a ***** microfinance portfolio for a for leading Europe based Microfinance Provider. Furthermore, worked with Syndications to distribute larger tier 1 FI and Corporate client transactions via our A/B loan program (similar to IFC. EBRD etc).
• With our Capacity Development team in assisting clients with financial and strategic advisory covering variety of areas depending on the underlying client type; This has in practice varied from advising on optimal funding structures on areas such as bond buy-backs by our existing clients to helping MFI clients incorporate better MIS systems as part of their collection mechanism.
• Managed the auxiliary business associated with transactions including hedging FX and interest rate risk via swaps, options and derivatives.
• The product speciality of CM ensured that I had cross-regional and multi sector focus. The desk focused on the upper end of FMO’s portfolio (BRIC + nations) and my individual focus was on Africa (S. Africa, Nigeria and Kenya) and Asia (India, Turkey, Indonesia) however we looked to move down-stream where opportunities matched our mission.
• Had a key role in an internal committee designed to harmonize FMO´s traditional lending and microfinance products with CM offerings.
09/ ***** /07: CMD, London, UK: Fixed Income Analyst
• Employed as a bond analyst covering ***** and European bond ***** , producing regular reports on plain vanilla and structured notes market with a focus on USD issuance.
• Analysed the micro-nature of specified trades, including option pricing and also a macro analysis of the sector and ***** economy, and provided specialized consultancy for specific investment banking clients through longer research reports on both the US structured and plain vanilla bond ***** .
• Maintained a daily up-dated trade database of all USD denominated issuances, with key structural details and statistics on issuers, dealers and sector/market statistics.
09/ ***** /06: Consultant, Various, London, UK
• EPI, then known as Profit focused Group, is a multi-disciplinary consultancy providing bespoke research, training and consultancy to the financial sector.
• Worked on contracted research assignments covering macro/micro economics and corporate finance.
• Employed as a Consultant in the Investment Management Team at FactSet Europe Limited. Role involved client visitation, as well as dealing with all clients from the 24 hour helpdesk.
• Provided training and direct solutions on various analytical products including DataCentral, Portfolio Analysis as well as in-house company research software to key Investment Management clients, including Henderson ***** Investors and Schroders.
• Conducted financial modeling including valuation analysis (DCF) and spreadsheet modeling based on various key financial fundamentals.
03/ ***** /05: Sarvodaya/SEEDS/(ADB & World Bank ), Colombo, Sri Lanka: Junior Consultant
• Sarvodaya Economic Enterprises Development Services (SEEDS) is the largest microfinance bank by Loan Portfolio in Sri Lanka, and one of the largest in South Asia.
• As part of an ADB and World Bank financed study, I and a colleague conducted a comprehensive policy review of all levels of the organization, with specific regard to interest rate policy, operational efficiency and diversification of long term funding sources for new lending to untapped ***** .
• Research involved policy discussions with diverse stakeholders as well as numerous field visits with SEEDS staff across regional and local offices and key transnational NGOs including the UN, World Bank and Governmental development units such as the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
• Submitted a final report and recommendations, which were incorporated into the strategic review of ***** cation





University of Manchester, UK. MSc. In Development Economics, Dec 2004.
Masters Dissertation: Methodological study of the impact of Securities Transaction Taxes and the Tobin Tax on various Emerging ***** .
Applied Development Econometrics Project: Key Masters level applied work that examined the positive or negative impact of financial liberalisation, using a variety of measures, in developed and developing nations over a 20 year period.
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. BS in Business Administration (BS. BA), May 2003
Major Emphasis: Finance, Minor Concentration: Economics (Hon)
Major/Minor GPA: 3. 51 (Equivalent 1st Class )
Overall GPA: 3. 30
GRE: Mathematical: 680/800 Analytical: 5. 5/6 (scaled score)

London School of Economics, UK. (Study Abroad), 2001, International Political Economy

Conference Submissions: Submitted paper at the 2006 Eastern Economics Association (EEA) Conference held in Philadelphia; “Critique of the Utilitarian Argument for Concentrating on GDP per capita as the objective for Development”.




Interests and Activities




IT Proficiency and Languages

M Member Organizations: World Economic Forum (WEF – Young ***** Shaper); Microfinance Club of UK; New Economic Foundation; Chatham House.
Volunteer Work: ***** Served on the board (Treasurer) of the United Network of Youth Peacekeepers (UNOY), a leading ***** peace building organization based in the Hague and with member organizations in 30 countries across 4 continents. Developed a sustainable funding strategy.
Other Interests: Travel, 5-a-side football, squash, cricket, chess and music

IT and Technical Skills: Advanced knowledge of MS Excel, Power-point and Word. Intermediate knowledge of MS Access and SQL. Highly proficient on both FactSet and Bloomberg Platforms with considerable knowledge of Finance Software E-views, Accountancy Software Peachtree, and Econometrics packages Stata and Microfit.
Foreign Languages: Hindi/Malayalam: Fluent; Arabic: Intermediate level (spoken); French/German: Basic

References Available Upon Request