First Reserve hires ahead of fund close

First Reserve, an energy-focused private equity firm, has made three hires in its Connecticut and London offices.
 
The new appointments come in the run up to First Reserve holding an $8 billion (€6.35 billion) final close on its eleventh fund. The firm’s previous fund closed on $2.4 billion in 2004.
 
Neil Hartley has joined First Reserve International in London as a director. Joshua Weiner and Matthew Raben have joined the firm’s Greenwich, Connecticut headquarters as assistant vice president and assistant general counsel respectively. Last March, First Reserve promoted Alex Kruger to managing director in its Connecticut office.
 
Hartley was a director at investment bank Simmons & Co International, where he led the corporate finance teams in Aberdeen, London and Moscow on deals in the energy sector. Before that, Hartley spent seven years at Schlumberger, an oilfield services business, as field service manager and field engineer.
 
Before First Reserve, Weiner worked in the capital markets group at Warburg Pincus, where he was responsible for structuring and negotiating all financing activity. Before that, he was with Morgan Stanley in the global capital markets and global leveraged finance group.
 
Raben has joined from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, an international law firm, where he negotiated and advised on the firm’s private equity transactions and mergers and acquisitions.
 
In June, First Reserve, which also has an office in Houston, sold Power Well Services, a well testing and fluid analysis platform company, to Expro International Group, a UK-listed oilfield service business, for $675 million.