Aventicum head Mays to leave

Shaun Mays, the former Climate Change Capital chief executive, is to leave the fledgling infrastructure platform, Aventicum Infrastructure Partners, at the end of June this year, Infrastructure Investor has learnt.

Aventicum Infrastructure Partners, which Mays headed, was the infrastructure arm of Aventicum Capital Management, an asset management joint venture between Swiss bank Credit Suisse and Qatar Holding, the investment arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.

Aventicum Capital Management was launched around late 2012/early 2013 and was headed by Aladdin Hangari, the head of Credit Suisse’s business in Qatar. In January this year, Hashem Montasser, the joint venture’s Qatar chief executive, resigned after a year in the post.

Little was known about the activities of the below-the-radar infrastructure arm, with industry sources saying they were not aware of it having done any deals. Infrastructure Investor was unable to contact the team – believed to number no more than a few individuals – for comment, and it is not known what its plans are in the wake of Mays’ departure.

It is understood that Mays’ Credit Suisse email address has not been in use since the end of March, leading to speculation that he is currently on gardening leave. It is also understood that he will be leaving Zurich, where he has been working for the joint venture, to return to his New York base.

Mays left sustainability-focused fund manager and adviser Climate Change Capital, where he was chief executive officer, in September 2011. He was previously founder and global head of Deutsche Bank’s RREEF Infrastructure Investments in New York, and chief executive of Deutsche Asset Management and Westpac Financial Services in Australia.

He was also the author of the “Mays Report” for the Australian federal government on “Corporate sustainability – an investor perspective”.