It is with great delight that we today announce the judging panel for IJGlobal Awards 2023, revealing a group of established industry professionals who will deliberate the company awards for Europe and Africa.

These awards are to recognise landmark developments and the organisations that contributed to the delivery of greenfield projects in the infrastructure and energy space, as well as refinance activity.

IJGlobal Awards are not to be confused with IJInvestor Awards (Americas and Rest of World) which celebrate developments within the infrastructure fund community and infra/energy M&A. They also stand separate to the IJGlobal ESG Awards.

We believe that the IJGlobal Awards are the single most transparent and peer review in this sector, and we pride ourselves on fielding regional teams of experts who assess submissions and vote (in secret) on the organisations that win them over.

The Europe and Africa judges will meet for Judgment Day in early January at 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. In effect, this means that 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 – Societe Generale
• Annette Bannister – MetLife Investment Management
• Craig Forrest – Arup
• Emma Haight – Fidelity International
• Sarah Heavey – until recently CIBC
• Olusola Lawson – AIIM
• Lisa McDermott – ABN Amro
• Gabriel Mpubani – Freshfields
• Gabriel Onagoruwa – Olaniwun Ajayi
• Cathy Oxby – Africa GreenCo
• Sarah Roberts – INTECH Risk Management
• Priya Veerapan – Infracapital
• Bart White – Santander

Allan Baker

Allan has worked at SocGen for many 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.

Building on many years’ experience in the renewable energy sector, particularly in offshore wind in Europe, Asia and the US, he is now playing a leading role in developing the bank’s global energy transition strategy. Allan’s recent focus has been in advising on innovative leading edge energy transition projects, including CCUS, interconnectors and increasingly, hydrogen.

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.

Emma Haight

Having recently started at Fidelity International as head of infrastructure debt, Emma was previously 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 in 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.

Sarah Heavey

A seasoned infrastructure lending professional, Sarah has logged stays at 3 key pre-GFC lenders before serving as a manging director role at one of Canada’s leading banks, a role she recently exited.

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 by Laurie Mahon as London-based managing director and head of project finance and infrastructure corporate banking.

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 Fund’s 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.

Lisa McDermott

Lisa has more than 25 years’ experience in structured finance and a decade of experience within renewable energy.

Since 2013, has been part of the project finance team of ABN Amro, where she leads the bank’s renewable and energy transition project financing activities out of the Netherlands.

During that time, Lisa has spearheaded ABN Amro’s growth in the wind, solar, geothermal and merchant renewables sectors in Europe and is actively engaged in the development and financing of emerging technologies to support the energy transition such as floating wind, green hydrogen, PtX, energy storage pathways and advanced biofuels.

Lisa started her career as a lawyer with Clifford Chance before going on to hold several senior origination, structuring and management roles within the financial industry. 

Gabriel Mpubani

Gabriel serves as co-head of Freshfield’s Africa group and is a partner in the energy, transport and infrastructure business in London within the firm’s global transactions practice.

His practice is mainly focused on energy, mining and infrastructure. He has acted on numerous project development and financing transactions around the world, representing governments, sponsors, project companies, lenders (including ECAs, DFIs, MDBs and ACPs) on many of their most critical transactions.

Gabriel has also worked on a number of debt capital markets, M&A and acquisition financing transactions.

Clients value Gabriel's breadth of experience across many jurisdictions and situations in developing markets, and his ability to get the job done to international standards in often challenging business and legal environments.

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.

Cathy Oxby

Cathy has more than 20 years of professional experience in the infrastructure and renewable energy sectors and is co-founder and chief commercial officer of Africa GreenCo.

She is closely involved in all aspects of GreenCo’s operations and leads the commercial negotiation of the many market-leading arrangements necessary to implement GreenCo’s innovative business model, including financing, transaction structuring and regulatory. 

In the early years of Cathy’s career, she trained as a project finance lawyer at Allen & Overy before transitioning to a commercial role as an investment director at a leading infrastructure fund.

Prior to co-founding Africa GreenCo, she established her own consultancy to help diverse clients successfully navigate the infrastructure project lifecycle, from project inception to asset management.

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.

Priya Veerapan

Priya joined Infracapital in 2021 to develop the infrastructure fund’s greenfield infrastructure investment activities.

She has more than 19 years’ experience in infrastructure financing, development and asset management experience.

Priya joined Infracapital from Deloitte where she was a director in the infrastructure advisory team advising infrastructure fund clients on telecoms, energy, transport project financings and acquisitions.

Prior to Deloitte Priya was a vice-president at Canadian developer Ledcor as well as a director with 3i where she was responsible for origination, execution and asset management of infrastructure investments across sectors including energy transmission and generation, accommodation and transport.

Priya transferred to 3i following its acquisition of Barclays Infrastructure Funds Management, where she was an investment director.

Bart White

Bart is EMEA head of energy structured finance at Santander, operating out of London.

He runs Santander's energy financing activity across Europe, the Middle East and parts of Latin America.

The team of around 50 professionals is primarily focused on financing and financial advisory of renewable energy where Santander has a strong presence, but also in hydrogen, CCS, BESS, biogas, EfW, smart meters and other tangential subsectors.

Previously Bart ran Santander's UK and Nordics structured finance business, and before that Santander's European structured finance advisory practise.

Bart previously worked at UBS leading its utilities and infrastructure finance business, and at RBS.