Marguerite Adviser hires CFO, MD for energy

Marguerite Adviser, the advisory arm responsible for appraising and originating investments for the €1.5 billion Marguerite infrastructure fund, has hired a new chief financial officer and a managing director for energy investments.

The two key senior hires will join Nicolas Merigo, chief executive of Marguerite Adviser and former head of Santander Infrastructure Capital. Marguerite will focus on infrastructure investments across the European Union’s 27 member states.

David Harrison, a former Macquarie veteran, is the advisory arm’s new chief financial officer with close to 20 years of experience in financial services and buy-side investments.

At Macquarie, he served as executive director of Macquarie Capital Funds Europe, head of Macquarie Infrastructure Group Europe responsible for the European portfolio, and chief executive of Macquarie Infrastructure Development Fund. He worked on Macquarie’s development of the M6 toll road in the UK and the privatisation of APRR, which Macquarie owns together with French developer Eiffage.

William Pierson, the new managing director for energy investments, was most recently a partner at Santander Infrastructure Capital, where he worked with Merigo. Pierson has over 20 years of international project finance and M&A experience in oil, gas, power, renewables and infrastructure as principal, advisor and in debt raising. Prior to joining Santander, he was head of project finance at Royal Dutch Shell Group and before that he was a director at Credit Suisse.

In addition to the senior executives, two junior members have been hired, bringing Marguerite Adviser’s team to five people. The advisory arm is looking to hire a managing director for transportation to complete the firm’s senior executives.

In total, Marguerite Adviser is looking to build a 15-strong team with experience in greenfield infrastructure. Half of the team is expected to be in place by the summer, which will allow the advisory arm to start looking at new investments. The full team should be in place by the end of the year.

As previously reported on InfrastructureInvestor.com, the Marguerite fund announced its first close in March this year with over €700 million in commitments. The fund launched late last year with €600 million in seed capital from the EIB, France’s Caisse des Dépôts, Italy’s Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, Germany’s KfW, Spain’s Instituto de Crédito Oficial and Poland’s PKO Bank Polski – all state-backed banks, each having contributed €100 million to the fund.

Malta’s Bank of Valletta, Portugal’s Caixa Geral de Depósitos and the European Commission (EC) then joined the six original sponsors of the fund, with the EC contributing €80 million. Marguerite will invest in infrastructure and energy projects across Europe. About 65 percent of its investments will be in greenfield projects.