Non Executive Chairman
Jeremy Leggett
Jeremy Leggett - Social entrepreneur Jeremy, author of The Carbon War and Half Gone, is founder and non-executive chairman of Solarcentury and founder and Chairman of SolarAid, an African solar lighting charity set up with Solarcentury profits. Described by the Observer as “Britain’s most respected green energy boss,” he writes and blogs for the Guardian, the Financial Times, and Sublime Magazine. He was the first Hillary Laureate for International Leadership on Climate Change, a CNN Principal Voice, and Entrepreneur of the Year at the New Energy Awards. He is on the associate faculties, lecturing in business and environment, at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and St Gallen.
Chief Executive Officer
Derry Newman
Derry Newman - Derry is CEO of Solarcentury, joining the company in December 2006. Prior to Solarcentury, Derry worked at Sony Europe for over ten years, responsible for considerable transformational change in the rapidly evolving and competitive arena of consumer electronics. In 1999, he was appointed Director of Customer Information at Group Sony Broadcast and Professional before taking the role of Vice President, E-Business Sony Europe in 2002. He was appointed Senior Vice President Operations, Sony Europe in 2003 and was subsequently appointed Managing Director, Sony United Kingdom in June 2004. Derry’s achievements have spanned leading large scale change projects and e-business, to commitment to social responsibility and education. Prior to Sony, he was Director of Operations, EMEA Motorola Inc. He has also worked as a consultant, providing advice to organisations undergoing significant change activities.
Chief Financial Officer
Neil Perry
Neil Perry - Prior to joining Solarcentury in 2000 Neil had over 15 years' experience in the investment industry. Having been an analyst and portfolio manager for seven years, he joined Baring Securities Latin America in 1991. He was the Institutional Investor #1 ranked analyst in his sector for three consecutive years and, as Director of Latin American Research, headed the top equity team in the region. In 1995 he was included in Worth Magazine’s ‘The World’s Top 50 Financial Market Movers’ survey. Before returning to the UK, where he worked for BSCH, he was CEO of ING Baring Securities, Argentina.
Our Directors
Derrick Allan - Derrick is Head of Ventures and Development, Scottish and Southern Energy. He manages SSE’s direct investments in various companies and indirect investments through various funds. He is responsible for identifying and delivering development opportunities for the SSE Group through JV's, acquisition and development of new products/services.
Previous to this role he spent over 11 years within Corporate Business Development at SSE where he led development of acquisitions, development of joint ventures and had a lead role in developing commercial and funding structures for various PFI projects.
Derrick has an MSc in Electricity Industry Management from Strathclyde University.
Andreas Eggenberg
Andreas Eggenberg - Andreas is CEO of Grupo ECOS, which manages two Private Equity Investment funds of Swiss origin (Ecos Sustainable Equity Fund, Inc. y Ecos Forestry Fund Inc.), with an investment focus on clean technologies, renewable energy and sustainable forestry. Mr. Eggenberg is a Swiss national, Political and economic scientist graduated from the University of Lausanne, Business Administration, management and executive management specializations at the Universities of Munich, UCLA, Kellogg and INCAE.
Previously, Executive Director Amanco Agricultural Solutions, leading irrigation systems provider in Latin America based in Brazil. Before that various executive positions at Grupo Nueva and Amanco in Argentina, Costa Rica and Guatemala, including Regional Head Amanco Central America and Carribbean. Previously, Senior VP at Volkart Brothers Holding, and Executive Director at Green Cross International. He is Member of the Boards of Avina Foundation, Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD) Panama, of the Advisory Boards of the IADB Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility, and of the Latin American Advisory Board of the World Water Forum; and is a faculty member of Sustainability, London; and was Chairman of the Board of Fundes Guatemala and member of the local INCAE Council.
Sven Hansen
Sven Hansen - Zouk Capital LLP. Dr. Sven Hansen’s career spans over 20 years in private equity and investment banking in the cleantech, environment and energy sectors. Sven joined Zouk in 2010 as a Venture Partner and brings a wealth of experience in deal sourcing, transactions and strategy to both the clean technology and solar infrastructure teams.
Having created the role of Global Head of Environmental Risk Management at UBS, Sven has spent much of his career investing in and supporting the cleantech industry. As Partner at Black Emerald, founder of InErgies Capital and Chief Investment Officer of Good Energies Sven consolidated his position as one of the world’s most experienced cleantech investors, with exposure to the advisory, investment banking and private investment practices of the industry. Over the last decade he has been engaged in growing some of the world’s largest solar companies across Europe, Asia and North America such as Concentrix, Norsun, Q-Cells, REC, Solarcentury, Solarfun, Trina. Sven has been involved in investments in over 40 clean tech companies and in listing four companies (QCE, REC, SOLF, TSL).
Sven studied at the Universities of Basel and St. Gallen where he earned his Ph.D. in 1992 on Environmental Risk Management. His work on the environment and finance has been widely published in both academic and mainstream literature and he is a regular speaker at cleantech conferences.
John Leggate
John Leggate - John joined VantagePoint as a Venture Partner in 2008 and has been a member of the CleanTech Advisory Council for the past three years. John has been active professionally in the energy space for over thirty years. His early career in the electric power utility business was in the design and construction of nuclear and fossil fired power plants. Within BP, John had an extensive career essentially in large scale (ca $5billion) oil field project management. Additionally, John had a significant leadership role in the integration of the BP/Amoco/ Arco/ Veba mergers. Finally, with BP, as Group CIO, John led the digital transformation of the “New BP” which involved significant investment in innovation, incubation and start ups. John was honored by the Queen in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the international digital technology and cyber security agenda. John is a graduate of Glasgow University (BSc Engineering) and is a Fellow of both the Institute of Electrical Engineering and the Royal Academy of Engineering.
