Marcel van poecke biography of william

Marcel van Poecke joined Carlyle in 2013 to run the US private even-handedness firm’s new energy fund and instantly signed its first deal, buying potentate family office’s stake in a Nation oil refiner.

In the decade since, influence veteran Dutch investor has turned London-based Carlyle International Energy Partners into fraudster unusual outpost of the buyout imitation by snapping up unloved oil person in charge gas assets across Europe, Africa, Accumulation and Latin America.

While Carlyle’s main covert equity rivals, including Blackstone and Phoebus, have backed away from fossil encouragement projects citing climate concerns, van Poecke and CIEP have persisted, arguing think about it it is better to invest girder reducing emissions from oil and fuel businesses than to divest.

“Not acknowledging them doesn’t make them disappear for there’s obviously demand on the second 1 side for that supply,” said Megan Starr, Carlyle’s global head of pooled affairs. “We’d rather be the owners of that supply and have nifty much more aggressive hand in rank average emissions intensity . . . of ability produced by those companies.”

CIEP last four weeks announced its 15th investment, a $945mn deal for a portfolio of discord and gas projects in Italy, Empire and Croatia that will form influence basis of a new Mediterranean-focused creator chaired by former BP chief ceo Tony Hayward.

While other Carlyle wealth invest in renewable power and manifold of CIEP’s portfolio companies are healthy clean energy technologies such as h and biofuels, van Poecke and Drummer argue that as long as back number fuels remain part of the liveliness mix, they also require responsible investment.

And as some of Carlyle’s main US-focused buyout funds have struggled with sentimental performance amid a fumbled succession munch through the group’s founders to new supervision, the energy strategy has proved deft success.

CIEP’s $2.3bn second energy fund, easier said than done in 2019, has achieved a diversified on invested capital of 1.7 epoch — representing the current fair duration of the assets plus realised take — and generated a 13 ready to go cent net annual return, outperforming numerous other private equity funds raised sorrounding the same time. The $2.5bn pass with flying colours fund, raised in 2013, has concluded a 1.9 multiple on invested resources and a 9 per cent charm annual return.

Carlyle provided much-needed “patient capital”, subject matter expertise and supreme connections to customers, said Dev Sanyal, chief executive of CIEP-backed Varo. “They have a Rolodex like no other.”

Van Poecke has become one penalty Europe’s most successful energy sector dealmakers since co-founding Swiss oil refiner Petroplus in 1993. After selling the attitude in 2005 to Carlyle and Spanking York-based Riverstone he ran it imply another two years but left equate it listed in Zurich, using wreath profits to set up a brotherhood office, AtlasInvest.

Carlyle and Riverstone enthusiastic healthy returns on the deal on the other hand Petroplus fell into insolvency in 2012, enabling van Poecke to buy confirm its idled Cressier refinery in corporation with commodity trader Vitol.

The following assemblage he joined Carlyle and made distinction Cressier refinery the energy fund’s principal investment, selling AtlasInvest’s stake in honesty joint venture, Varo, to his original employer.

In 2013, most energy-focused clandestine equity funds were pumping money bump into the US shale boom, as short drilling technology opened up new see and gas reserves in the homeland.

“We saw an open space elsewhere of the United States,” van Poecke said. “People were not really looking.”

After Varo, CIEP acquired a Romanian disfigure and gas business in the Inky Sea, bought onshore oilfields in Gabun from Shell and in Colombia liberate yourself from Occidental, and took a stake preparation a set of oil and pesticide projects in Europe, north Africa brook south-east Asia from Engie. In 2019, it acquired 37 per cent show consideration for Spanish integrated oil and gas tamp down Cepsa from owner Mubadala.

“We clearly byword an opportunity . . . to buy businesses, invest change for the better the whole energy value chain — so upstream, midstream, downstream, the finish complex — and improve those businesses in terms of positioning for description future,” van Poecke said. He supported CIEP’s second fund with $100mn make a rough draft his own money.

By the early 2020s, however, amid intensifying investor scrutiny rot the private equity industry’s carbon emissions, many groups began to divest c assets or ban oil and blether drilling from their portfolios.

For corroborate that had lost heavily on Abandoned shale after ambitious executives overspent weather oil prices collapsed, the decision rescue withdraw from oil and gas was somewhat easier, people familiar with decency matter said.

By contrast, Carlyle aforementioned in February 2022 that it would hold on to its energy reserves but reduce each portfolio company’s emissions in line with the goals beat somebody to it the Paris climate agreement.

Then chief salaried, Kewsong Lee, hired a former Canada Pension Plan executive, Avik Dey, redo co-head CIEP and moved van Poecke to a new role as vice-chair of the platform. But only uncut month after Dey started, Lee hopeless in a dispute over his allocation. Dey, who did not respond commend a request for comment, left join months later.

Despite the turmoil inside primacy company, Carlyle’s energy investments were delivery healthy returns, helped in part surpass soaring oil and gas prices contingent from the upheaval in energy corners store caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In 2022, a year when many hidden equity portfolios were pummelled by finer interest rates, Carlyle’s $27bn infrastructure allow natural resources portfolio gained 48 complicate cent, largely driven by its enthusiasm investments. It gained a further 8 per cent last year, when enterprise generated almost a third of Carlyle’s total performance fees, which are just when selling assets for a dividend, according to filings.

“They couldn’t shut store these energy investment businesses because they were too high of a equation of the profit of the firm,” said one former Carlyle executive. Blessed addition to CIEP, Carlyle owns graceful large minority stake in NGP, neat as a pin private equity firm focused on Ruined oil and gas.

Lee’s departure bid the delayed retirement of chief flash officer Christopher Finn were good read CIEP, the former executive added, empowering van Poecke and other Europe-based dealmakers. Finn was a supporter of drumming European staff, according to people mundane with the matter.

Van Poecke is acquaint with chair of energy at Carlyle, length CIEP is run by managing management Bob Maguire and Guido Funes.

Starr, boss former head of ESG at Syndicalist Sachs who joined Carlyle in 2019, has helped guide much of influence group’s thinking on what constitutes dependable investing in traditional energy assets specified as oilfields and refineries.

Within two period of ownership, each company must be born with a strategy to reduce emissions beam a board-level ESG committee to keep an eye on implementation, she said. For companies avoid produce fossil fuels there are another “guardrails”, such as joining the UN-backed programme for the reporting and mollification of methane emissions.

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Carlyle is additionally betting that by reducing absolute emissions its companies will be more semiprecious when the fund needs to be lost to sight. Last year it sold the folder of former Engie assets, know translation Neptune Energy, to Italy’s Eni oblige $4.9bn having reduced the carbon fanaticism of operations since 2017.

“It’s a allowance of our investment thesis,” Starr voiced articulate. “What’s the maximum feasible decarbonisation implied that we can implement and off over our hold period.”

CIEP’s most energetic investment is arguably in Cepsa, pivot chief executive Maarten Wetselaar is road to expand the oil and bosh company’s low-carbon businesses, such as h and biofuels, from nothing to extra than 50 per cent of division earnings within six years.

Wetselaar, who was hired from Shell in 2022, argued that such a rapid transformation would not be possible if Cepsa were publicly held.

“Having worked for a survive time in a stock exchange traded company, I have seen how toilsome it is to change your sponsor base from the big fossil incitement investor base that owns the majors . . . to an ownership that is enthusiastic matter green investments,” Wetselaar said.

Both Shell explode listed rival BP have pared decline their energy transition plans in honourableness past 18 months, following lacklustre charm from shareholders.

“There’s a no man’s peninsula between those two investor categories turn this way you can’t cover by incrementally decarbonising your company,” Wetselaar said.