IJGlobal Awards 2022 – Europe & Africa Judges
It’s that time of year again – the time when we take great pride in announcing the judging panel for IJGlobal Awards 2022, revealing a group of established industry professionals who will deliberate the company awards for Europe and Africa.
IJGlobal Awards are not to be confused with IJInvestor Awards which celebrate developments within the infrastructure fund community and infra/energy M&A. These awards are hosted in the autumn.
We believe these awards are the single most transparent and peer review in this sector, and IJGlobal prides itself on fielding regional teams of experts to assess submissions and vote (in secret) on the organisations that win them over.
The independent panel of judges will meet for Judgment Day early tomorrow (Tuesday 10 January) in IJGlobal offices and over Teams to debate the merits of companies that closed deals – project finance greenfield and refi – over the course of the 2022 calendar year.
Judges are recused from casting a vote where they are conflicted, as in – lawyers cannot vote in the legal segment and bankers are not allowed to sway the decision in the MLA category.
The judges (in alphabetical order) for Europe and Africa Judgment Day are:
- Allan Baker – global head of energy transition, Societe Generale
- Annette Bannister – MD and head of European infra and PF at MetLife Investment Management
- Craig Forrest – strategic partner, Arup
- Manish Gupta – partner for strategy and transactions, infrastructure, EY
- Emma Haight – former partner at Ares Management
- Phillip Hall – head of structured finance for EMEA, MUFG Bank
- Sarah Heavey – MD and head of European PF and infra, CIBC
- Layth Irani – co-general manager and MD, SMBC
- Olusola Lawson – MD and co-head, AIIM
- David Lee – head global infrastructure group, Allen & Overy
- Gabriel Onagoruwa – co-founding partner and chair of finance and project development, Olaniwun Ajayi
- Sarah Roberts – president, INTECH Risk Management
- John Seed – partner and lead for M&A northern Europe, ERM
Allan Baker
Allan has worked at SocGen for 15 years, and in the energy sector for more than 35 years, initially as an engineer and then in finance. During his career he has advised on and/or financed a broad spectrum of energy and infrastructure projects in Europe, the US and Asia.
Most recently Allan advised on the NeuConnect interconnector between Germany and the UK, and is currently acting as financial adviser for the Vertex Low Carbon (blue) Hydrogen project (HyNet North West CCUS cluster), Net Zero Teesside (CCGT with CCS) and Northern Endurance Partnership, the CO2 pipeline and offshore store infrastructure for the Teesside and Humberside CCS cluster.
Allan has also been helping to drive innovation in renewables, including acting as financial adviser to HyWind Scotland and Provence Grand Large (PGL) floating wind transactions, PGL being the first project financing for floating wind, and is currently acting as financial adviser to the 1GW Cerulean Winds floating wind (offshore O&G electrification and hydrogen) project in the UK.
Allan’s role in energy transition has led to him being a key contributor to the discussion around policy development, including acting as a member of the UK government CCUS Council and the Hydrogen Expert Group.
Annette Bannister
As managing director and head of European infrastructure and project finance at MetLife Investment Management, Annette has risen steadily over the 6-plus years she has been at the US-based fund to take the top job in Q3 2019.
She has deep experience in the infrastructure / energy lending world having worked at SocGen and Barclays before heading down the alternative route.
In early 2011 she switched camps to join AMP, followed by a stint at LGIM and then finding a forever home at MetLife where she has built an impressive team.
Craig Forrest
Last seen at the IJInvestor Awards in London picking up a couple of awards for Arup, Craig has long had a global remit and in 2022 took on the function of strategic partner in the consultancy.
For 3 years prior to that he had been living in Canada (most of that under lockdown) where he was chief executive of Arup Corporate Finance until March 2022, when he returned to London.
Craig has worked at Arup since the spring of 2007, and – from 2008-10 – he operated out of Dubai as commercial director for the region.
From 2010 to 2013, he was advisory lead for the UK, the Middle East and Africa; and then from 2013-19 he was global leader of business and investor advisory.
He is one of the most instantly recognised figures in the global technical advisory space and has driven evolution across Arup to include financial and economic advisory.
Manish Gupta
A regular member of the IJGlobal judging panels, Manish secures his place repeatedly on the committee for being one of the best-prepared judges having analysed every submission he has access to (not something we can say about many of his peers!).
Manish is a long-established partner at Ernst & Young, operating out of the London office in the infrastructure corporate finance team, with responsibility for the transport sector – though his job title seems to have evolved in recent times to read “partner for strategy and transactions, infrastructure”.
With a good bit more than 20 years’ experience in infrastructure financing and M&A, having worked on transactions that range from project finance, refinancing and complex restructurings… there’s not a lot he hasn’t done in this space.
Emma Haight
Until recently, Emma was a partner at Ares Management and her career has spanned an interesting spread of roles that gives her something of a unique view of the infrastructure and energy sectors.
She was head of infrastructure debt for Europe at AMP Capital and flipped over to Ares last February (2022) to head the team in the organisation that bought the AMP Capital book of business.
However, her origins in the infra/energy world started at Allen & Overy when she was working with Graham Vinter and Anne Baldock. From there, she flipped into a couple of years as BD manager at NUR Energie before joining NIBC Bank as a project finance lender.
She successfully made the leap to the other side of the table to join AMP in spring 2014 and steadily rose the ranks to head up the fund manager’s infra debt segment where mezz debt was the offering.
Phillip Hall
An established figure in the project finance community, Phillip has been in a leadership role at MUFG Bank since the spring of 2011 having been one of the leading lights at Royal Bank of Scotland (when it led the infra financing world).
As so many people did in the global financial crisis, Phillip exited RBS (2009) to take a role of head of infrastructure and rail for EMEA and the Americas at HSH Nordbank, while also serving as its global head of infra advisory.
He exited the German bank in 2011 after a couple of years to join MUFG as head of infrastructure and transport structured finance and in 2017 was promoted to head of structured finance for the EMEA region.
He is renowned as one of the foremost lenders at one of the leading Japanese banks and leads a team that has carved an impressive niche in the sector.
There is not much that Phillip has not seen and done when it comes to lending and advisory across the international infrastructure and energy space.
Sarah Heavey
A seasoned infrastructure lending professional, Sarah has logged stays at 3 key pre-GFC lenders before landing a manging director role at one of Canada’s leading banks.
The early days of Sarah’s career saw her start at Allied Irish Bank (AIB), followed by (what at the time seemed an inevitably career move) more than 4 years at RBS followed by the challenging years at Dexia.
She spun out of that to join the CIBC team formed b Laurie Mahon as London-based managing director and head of project finance and infrastructure corporate banking and has never looked back.
Layth Irani
An infrastructure banker who needs no introduction… but will receive one all the same… Layth is one of the most instantly-recognised names in the infrastructure an energy sector.
He is renowned as a thought leader in this sector and has climbed the ladder to now serve as one of the most senior bankers in the renowned SMBC team that operates out of London.
Layth has been a mainstay of the IJGlobal Awards judging team for as long as this infra hack can recall and brings a wealth of understanding and market knowledge based on a long career at one of the most active lenders in the sector.
There are few people in the market with his depth of experience and exposure to a vast range of transactions across the globe.
He has been at SMBC since before the millennium and has risen to the position of co-general manager and managing director.
Olusola Lawson
Having been appointed co-managing director at African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM) in August 2020 Sola is ideally qualified to judge this region given his almost 20 years of corporate finance and infrastructure equity investing experience across European and African markets.
Previously he was an investment manager in Macquarie’s European Infrastructure Funds team in London, where he worked on a number of European infra transactions in a principal capacity, and played a key role in portfolio company management, primarily in the petrochemical storage and transport space.
Prior to Macquarie, Olusola worked at PwC in London where his focus was on transaction advisory services to a primarily private equity client base.
David Lee
There are few lawyers with whom IJGlobal has a longer and stronger relationship than it has with David at Allen & Overy.
You know you’re getting a bit long in the tooth when you start measuring work friendships by decades (as stands true with a good few on this panel) and David sits comfortably in this group.
He is a dyed-in-the-wool A&O lawyer with a couple of years spent on secondment to HM Treasury.
As with so many of his colleagues, David has worked on the biggest and brightest transactions over the years and likely has the scars to prove it.
In the infrastructure and energy community, the A&O team is highly regarded for its first class skills and it regularly leads international league tables for working on the standout transactions.
Gabriel Onagoruwa
Dr Gabriel Onagoruwa is a co-founding partner and chair of the finance and project development practice of Olaniwun Ajayi (OA), Africa’s first international law office in the City of London. Prior to this, he was a senior lawyer at the London office of White & Case.
His practice at OA focuses on advising development finance institutions, national and international oil companies, sponsors, developers, commercial banks, multilateral lending agencies and export credit agencies, in project, banking and international finance transactions across the power, O&G, mining and metals and real estate sectors.
He has advised clients on financing transactions with a cumulative value of more than $50 billion.
He is a member of the International Law Association, the International Bar Association, the Nigerian Bar Association and the Law Society of England and Wales.
Sarah Roberts
One of the insurance industry’s foremost experts in PPP, Sarah is also one of the few female insurance advisers in the infrastructure industry in North America – though her remit increasingly takes in Europe and she now lives in Austria.
At INTECH Risk Management, she brings a wealth of understanding of the risks faced by lenders and stakeholders on infra / energy transactions.
Sarah worked on Canada’s first P3 projects and her experience in project finance and construction provided a natural transition into PPP.
Since then, she has been involved with designing and implementing insurance specifications in all major agreements forming part of large projects.
John Seed
John is the partner lead for the ERM’s M&A northern Europe business, based in London, providing M&A transaction and post-transaction ESG, sustainability and technical advisory services.
He has more than 20 years’ experience of private finance due diligence and project preparation advisory services in the infrastructure and energy sectors from both the client and consultancy perspectives.
Prior to joining ERM, John worked for EBRD as the head of the sustainable infrastructure group policy and project preparation units. His team there provided upstream, mid-stream and downstream technical, procurement and advisory support for both public and private sector programmes and projects aligned to the banks sustainable infrastructure business. This involved support for more than 100 project investments annually, worth in the order of €4 billion.
Before EBRD, John was advisory global sector leader at Mott MacDonald with responsibility for global infrastructure advisory business strategy and growth.
He was also responsible for the drafting of several UK and international standard PFI/PPP, private finance and sustainability procedures and guidelines and was a board member of the International Project Finance Association (IPFA) for 6 years.
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