Speakers for SuperReturn Africa 2011 Included:

Arnaud is a Partner primarily specialising in leveraged buyouts & growth capital fund investments and focuses on small and mid-market buyout funds in the UK, France and Spain. He is also involved in European and Israeli ventures. He actively participates in all fund investment decisions at Adams Street and is responsible for managing relationships with several of Adams Street's managers. Prior to joining the Firm, Arnaud was a senior analyst at Access Capital Partners, a Paris-based private equity fund of funds.

Matthew has 19 years of professional experience and is currently the lead portfolio manager for an established South African fund-of-private equity funds. Previously he was Vice President of Derivatives Marketing for Middle East, Eastern Europe and South Africa for JP Morgan Chase. Prior to that he was Vice President of Investor Strategies for Chase Manhattan Bank in Singapore.

Gachao joined Trans-Century from McKinsey & Company in Johannesburg, where he was a member of the Office Leadership Group leading McKinsey’s Sub-Saharan Africa Practice. At McKinsey he was advising corporate clients in emerging markets on corporate finance, strategy, operational excellence and organizational effectiveness. He was also focusing on economic development (e.g., country strategy), electric power (particularly generation), global health and education and was the principal consultant that led the McKinsey assignment to develop the Vision 2030 project for the Government of Kenya.

Mr. Akinola is a senior private equity professional with more than 12 years of investment experience in Europe and Africa. He has been with Helios Investment Partners, an Africa-focused private equity firm with approximately $1.8 billion in assets under management, since its inception and formation in 2004. At Helios Mr. Akinola leads the firm’s efforts with regard to making energy investments and has also been instrumental in the firm’s infrastructure, telecom and financial services investments to date deploying more than US$750mn of equity capital for Sub Saharan Africa. Prior to Helios, Mr. Akinola, was an Investment Executive at Investcorp, a leading global private equity group where he worked on sourcing, structuring and executing leveraged buy-out transactions.

Bryce Fort is a Managing Director and founding partner of Emerging Capital Partners (ECP). Responsible for identifying, analyzing, and recommending investments, performing due diligence and leading transaction teams, he is also deeply involved with operations and strategies related to ECP. He currently sits on the boards of Cellcom, Wananchi Group Holdings, and New Dawn Mining Corp.

Richard Honey is an Investment Principal in the Frontier Markets Team of Investec Asset Management, where he works closely with our Specialist African Public Equity, Private Equity, Credit and Debt Teams.  He is based in Harare, Zimbabwe, with main responsibility for the Zimbabwe Recapitalisation Strategy, one of Investec Asset Management's special situations strategies. Before returning to Zimbabwe, Richard was a founding partner at ETV Capital, a specialist finance provider.  At ETV, Richard was the Head of the UK and a member of the Credit Committee where he completed numerous venture and convertible loans to public and private companies. 

Mr. Edward Odundo is a Director at Insurance Regulatory Authority and Insurance Training & Educational Trust and former Director at Nairobi Stock Exchange. He is Vice President of the International Organisation of Pensions Supervisors (IOPS). Mr. Odundo has held various high level responsibilities such as Commissioner of VAT and First Financial Controller at Kenya Revenue Authority, General Manager, East Africa Reinsurance Company and Finance Manager at Kenya Reinsurance Corporation.

Centum Investment Company Limited is the largest indigenous listed investment company in East Africa. Mr. Mworia has over 10 years’ experience in investment management and he previously served as the head of investments in TransCentury and Centum prior to becoming the CEO of Centum. He has led and closed multiple private equity transactions across Sub-Sahara Africa and had built expertise in deal sourcing and structuring. He sits on the boards of Centum platform companies such as UAP Insurance Company, Nairobi Bottlers and General Motors East Africa.

Mrs Stella Kilonzo is responsible for both the development and regulation of the entire capital markets in Kenya spanning licensing of market intermediaries, approval of all public offers and listing of securities in Kenya as well as implementing strategies for long-term resource mobilisation and facilitating financial access to transform the Kenyan economy into a globally competitive, middle income country, offering high quality of life for its citizens by the year 2030. As the immediate former Chairperson of the East African Securities Regulatory Authorities (EASRA) from 2008 to 2010, Mrs Kilonzo played a key role in bolstering regional integration of the East African Community (EAC) with the objective of heralding larger markets; improved competiveness; and higher returns on investments. Mrs Kilonzo has been recognised by New African Magazine, a pan-African Magazine, as one of the top 100 most influential people in Africa (June 2011).

Prior to joining Carlyle, Mr. Chigwende was the head of Africa Principal Finance for Standard Chartered. Mr Chigwende was responsible for establishing the Sub Sahara Africa Private Equity business which was a sector neutral, and geography neutral fund, with investments across a range of sectors including telecommunications, natural resources, agriculture and fast moving consumer goods. Prior to Standard Chartered, Mr. Chigwende was an Executive Director at Goldmans Sachs in London and spent many years at J.P. Morgan and Greenhill, primarily covering the Financial Institutions sector.

The Wellcome Trust is a global charity dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health with an investment portfolio of approximately $23 billion. Lisha joined the Wellcome Trust in 2006, originally in the Absolute Return and Buyout Fund team, and then moved across to set up and co-head the Direct Private team. Prior to joining the Trust, Lisha was in the corporate finance practice at Lazard, a financial advisory firm.

Stephen been involved for 25 years with ECI, which specialises in mid-market buy-outs and is now non-executive chairman. Jacana Venture Partnership,aims to expand the provision of funding and resources for African growth businesses. Jacana invests in and supports growth capital managers and has been working with InReturn Capital (covering the East African market) since January 2010 and with Fidelity Capital Partners (based in Ghana) since January 2011.

Patricia M. Dinneen has primary responsibility formanaging the BRIC Opportunities Funds, focusing on private equity investments in Brazil, Russia, India and China. Prior to joining Siguler Guff in 2004, she was at Cambridge Associates where she led the emerging markets private equity advisory business. Previously, she worked for 10 years at British Telecommunications. She has also held positions at Hughes Communications, RAND Corporation, and the White House.

National Pension Commission Nigeria regulates and supervises all pension matters. The technical division is primarily responsible for the development of regulations and supervision of investment of pension funds, insurance and retirement benefit administration in the pension industry, which currently has assets under management of N 2.3 trillion (approx USD 1.5billion). Prior to this role, Eyamba was Accountant General of Cross River State in Nigeria from 1999 and was a key player in the team that placed the state as a choice place to visit in Nigeria. Over the last 30 years Eyamba has served in various capacities at the Chase Merchant Bank of Nigeria as well as Price Waterhouse Coopers.

Janusz is a Managing Director in the Investment Management team at Capital Dynamics and has over 27 years of private equity experience. Janusz has a leading role in developing the firm’s emerging markets expertise and during his tenure as head of Asset Management, he was instrumental in building the Asset Management team at a time of substantial growth for the firm. Prior to joining Capital Dynamics, he was head of Central & Eastern European private equity at Allianz Specialized Investments (formerly Dresdner Kleinwort Capital).

Kevin Njiraini, is a Senior Investment Officer in the International Finance Corporation’s Private Equity and Investment Fund’s department. Kevin left Washington DC in 2009 to set up IFC’s first Private Equity office in Africa (Nairobi). He previously worked with IFC’s Global Financial Markets department where he worked on transactions in Africa, Asia and Central America. Prior to joining IFC Kevin was the general manager of an investment bank.

Linda joined the EPPF in September 2008 in the role of Investment Multi-Manager and was appointed as Chief Investment Officer in 2010. She held various positions in the financial industry, including investment management and consulting roles at the Transnet Pension Fund and Fifth Quadrant Actuaries and Consultants respectively.

Mr Jimerson is a founding partner of Musa Capital; an investment bank focused on bridging global capital to the African investment opportunity, and has served on several operating company boards for the firm’s private equity division where he has been responsible for sourcing, structuring, execution and value realisation. Over the past decade and a half, Mr. Jimerson has lead investment initiatives throughout the sub-continent, while anchoring the firm’s investment drive in financial services, consumer retail, telecom and property development housing group. As an advocate for the development of the Africa investment story, he has written several papers on the subject and participated in a host of conferences and panels on the issue. He started his career on Wall Street in 1992 focused on M&A and corporate finance.

Makena Capital Management is a US$16bn private endowment managing assets for sophisticated global institutional clients. At Makena, Richard heads up the firm’s investments efforts in Africa across various asset classes. He also leads the teams responsible for investing over $2.5bn of the firm’s global fixed income and active currency management allocations, which are substantially invested in global emerging markets. In addition, Richard is a member of the firm’s investment committee that oversees all fund investment and direct co-investment decisions across all private and public asset classes. Prior to joining Makena Capital, Richard Okello was a partner at Bridgewater Associates, one of the largest global Hedge Funds.