Foresight adds six pros, commits solar fund

Foresight Group, the Kent, England-based fund manager, has recruited six new professionals to its infrastructure team.

The firm has hired: Carly Magee as a senior investment manager from Ingenious Clean Energy, to take responsibility for solar transactions in the UK; Hadder Jalil, as an investment manager focused on financial modelling across the solar portfolio, from KPMG; and Tom Moore as a portfolio analyst looking at the operations and reporting of the solar portfolio, from Jubilee Financial Products.

It has also recruited: Julian Elsworth as a financial analyst from WSP Future Energy to specialise in the feasibility, concept design, specification and technical due diligence of solar projects; Lucio Favale as an investment analyst in the Rome office from investment bank Cohen & Co, where he was focused on public-private partnership (PPP) and Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deals; and Alberto Torini, who also joins in Rome as a senior investment and portfolio analyst with responsibility for managing the Italian portfolio, from law firm Bonelli Erede Pappalardo.

Jamie Richards, partner and head of infrastructure at Foresight, linked the appointments to the growing opportunity in solar in particular. “We will continue to extend our activities in the institutional acquisition of large scale solar assets in the coming year,” he said in a statement.

Last year, Foresight issued the UK’s largest solar bond at £60 million (€72 million; $99 million) and then listed the £150 million Foresight Solar Fund on the London Stock Exchange.

In a separate announcement, Foresight said the solar fund is now 100 percent committed to acquiring a portfolio of UK solar assets and hopes to be 100 percent invested by the end of March this year.

It added that Wymeswold, the UK’s largest operational solar plant – in which Foresight invested 30 percent of its IPO proceeds – had generated power 15 percent ahead of expectation between November 2013 and January 22 2014.