The senior members of Cranmore Partners have been involved in almost every single water and power project financing in the Middle East and Africa region over the last 15 years. Having served in diverse roles as project developers, advisers to bidders or, procuring authorities, and as lenders, the Cranmore Executive Team brings to the table a uniquely well-rounded understanding of the project lifecycle. We will therefore provide you with pure unbiased analysis, and our recommendations will be geared towards achieving the most favourable outcome for your bid situation. As senior ex-bankers, we also bring unique insight into banks’ processes and considerations. Our sole mission is to achieve superior and differentiated capital terms for our clients on their strategic transactions across the power, water and wider infrastructure sectors.
Yusuf Macun
Richa Prasad
Nick Sinden
Roberto de Diego Arozamena
Peter Luketa
Kenny Whitelaw-Jones
Danny Leitch
Halil Ersu
Görkem Muştu
Puroo Soni
Umang Agarwal
Aditya Gupta
Priya Sardana
Saumya Goel
Siva Samhit
Berkay Yildirim
Rajat Basal
Deepak Dalal
Yusuf Macun
Yusuf Macun has over 20 years’ experience in energy and infrastructure finance and investments, with a focus on the power, water, renewables and oil & gas verticals. His impressive track record includes the successful closing of cross-border deals in excess of c. USD 20bn over 35 transactions in a range of emerging and developed markets, particularly the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Before founding Cranmore Partners in 2017, Yusuf held a variety of leadership roles including Global Head of Project & Commercial Finance at Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (TAQA). and Head of Power &Renewables for Europe and Africa at HSBC London, where he advised governments and companies on a wide range of transactions across EMEA in verticals including wind, solar, coal/oil/gas-fired thermal and nuclear power generation. He also gained valuable transaction experience and expertise in prior roles at the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund, Lazard and Flemings.
Yusuf is a graduate of HEC Paris (Grande Ecole) and holds a Master’s Degree in Engineering & Computer Science from ENSIMAG in Grenoble.
Email:yusuf@cranmorepartners.com
Phone: +971 50 81 84 821
Richa Prasad
Richa has 17 years’ experience in energy and infrastructure project financing in the EMEA and Asia regions, with a particular focus on emerging markets and products utilising both debt and capital markets. Prior to joining Cranmore Partners, Richa was Executive Director and Head of Power, Utilities, Metals and Mining for the EMEA region at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC). Richa has strong experience in financial structuring, debt underwriting and arranging, project and acquisition finance, derivatives structuring and managing specialist advisors during performance of due diligence roles.
During her tenure with SMBC, Richa successfully closed in excess of 40 transactions across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Asia in sectors ranging from power generation, water desalination, wastewater treatment, district cooling and air separation to metals and mining, regulated networks and the telecom sector. Prior to SMBC London, Richa worked with SMBC in Asia on various financial advisory transactions, including the Singapore power privatisation, advising sponsors on a light rail transport project in Manila and a water pipeline project between Indonesia and Singapore. Prior to SMBC, Richa worked in Investment Banking at Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong and in India in the TMT sector on various M&A transactions.
Richa is a qualified Electrical Engineer from Delhi University and holds an MBA with specialisation in finance from the Indian Institute of Management.
Nick Sinden
Nick is an energy and infrastructure finance expert whose previous roles include being a director responsible for originating and executing European power and renewables business for the HSBC Project Finance team, working on over USD 40bn of projects. Nick has significant international experience in originating, advising, assessing, structuring and negotiating major project finance transactions for greenfield and operating projects across all classes of infrastructure, asset and lending sources throughout EMEA.
Within the power space, he has worked across a range of different technologies on renewables projects (onshore and offshore wind, solar and biomass), thermal power projects (nuclear, gas, coal), and power infrastructure (inter-connectors, smart meters) with private and public clients.
Prior to HSBC, Nick trained and qualified as a chartered accountant at KPMG in London working with financial services sector clients. Nick holds a BSc (Hons) in Economics from the University of Bristol.
Roberto de Diego Arozamena
Roberto de Diego Arozamena is an international executive with over 30 years in management, M&A, restructuring and transformation in the telecommunications, renewable energy, IT, industrial and infrastructure sectors.
In his role as President of BT Europe and President of Sales and Service for BT Ignite, Roberto was responsible for a 6.4 billion euro international business. He also led the transformation of multiple acquisitions into a single organization while carving out the mobile telecommunications from the corporate business. As CEO of BT Spain, he was named Best CEO of BT Europe and also obtained the highest employee motivation metrics in BT Group.
Roberto has established two startup companies and obtained the first positive results in the history of Jazztel (which was subsequently sold to Orange). He has experience in strategy, financing, continuous improvement, business development and high level negotiations.
Prior to joining Cranmore, he was responsible for the creation of Abdul Latif Jameel Energy and Environmental Services, where Roberto led the acquisition of a leading renewable energy developer with presence in 17 countries as well as creating a water desalination development company. He has been, CEO of ALJ Energy and Environmental Services (based in Dubai), CEO of Jazztel Plc, CEO of BT Spain, President of BT Europe, President of Sales and Services of BT Ignite and President for Europe Middle East and Africa for NCR Networking Solutions and Solfocus.
Roberto holds an MBA from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California. He participates as Board member of several companies and has been a speaker at energy, telecommunications and financing forums.
Peter Luketa
Peter has over 25 years of experience in project and export finance. He has managed and arranged finance for projects around world and has expertise in power (thermal, hydro, nuclear and renewable), transportation (rail, shipping, aircraft, bus rapid systems), infrastructure (roads, airports, ports, hospitals and real estate), telecommunications (including satellites and undersea cabling) and oil and gas (onshore and offshore including LNG).
He has worked with over 20 ECAs during his career, developing this product alongside debt capital markets, multilateral loan financing, Islamic debt financing and, more recently, equity participation. Prior to joining Cranmore Partners, Peter had a 40-year career with HSBC, culminating as Global Head of Export Finance and Forfaiting. In this position, he led HSBC’s franchise to the number one position in its industry for seven years running, achieving an annual volume of $10-12bn in ECA-backed financing per annum, equivalent to 10% market share.
Peter managed a team of over 70 Project and Export Finance professionals globally, including teams in London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Duesseldorf, Beijing, Hong Kong, Dubai, Tokyo and New York. His team pioneered many innovative ECA structures, including the first Islamic-based export credit, the first ECA-wrapped bond, the first renminbi and rouble financings and the first corporate structures in the UAE, Russia and China. Peter has built strong senior level contacts within various governments, investors, ECAs, corporates and financial institutions over his career. This has included discussing ECA finance with the US Treasury Department and the UK, French and German Treasuries. He has a proven record of negotiating special terms and conditions from ECAs and their respective Ministries in support of competitive project financing.
He is also highly experienced in leading ECA transactions on strategic projects located in “frontier jurisdictions”. Since leaving HSBC in 2017, Peter has held a board-level position with Anglo Gulf Trade Bank, a digitally-based trade finance bank headquartered in Abu Dhabi, whose principal shareholders are Mubadala and a private British concern. He is a linguist with a language and literature degree from Kingston upon Hull University (German and Dutch) and an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Banking (UK).
Kenny Whitelaw-Jones
A co-founder of Cranmore, Kenny is one of the leading financial modelling experts in the global project finance market. He has trained over 1,000 modelers from the world’s leading commercial and investment banks, top-tier accounting firms, infrastructure funds and project developers. As a project finance practitioner for over 16 years, he is also a leading modeler on transactions and has played a significant role in the development of financial modelling standards over the past 10 years. He has made media appearances as a financial modelling expert on leading news and business channels including BBC, CNN, and CNBC.
He has served as Cranmore’s Head of Financial Modelling & Analysis since 2016 and has been CEO of the modelling consultancy Gridlines since September of 2018. Since the start of his tenure at Cranmore, Kenny has advised on a range of projects for clients including Joule Africa, Neoen, JGC Corporation, Trina Solar, Al Jomaih, CNIM, GIC, EdF EN and Masdar.
From 2011 to 2015 he was the managing director of F1F9, following the merger of his training business, Financial Mechanics, with F1F9 in 2010. During his time as the head of F1F9, he grew revenue by 300%.
Prior to Financial Mechanics, he was an Associate Director of Deloitte Corporate Finance from 2005 to 2007 and Manager of KPMG Corporate Finance between 2001 and 2005. Kenny holds an MBA with the High Honours Award from Université Libre de Bruxelles and an MA in Psychology from the University of Aberdeen.
Danny Leitch
Danny spent the last 15 years in financial modelling both as an advisor with top tier accounting practices including EY and Grant Thornton and as leader of the modelling team in a leading Financial modelling consultancy.
Danny is a qualified accountant and expert financial modeller.
Halil Ersu
Halil has around 11 years’ project and structured finance experience, over the course of which he has successfully executed c.USD3.5 billion in project finance and mezzanine finance transactions.
Previously, Halil worked as an Assistant Manager, Project Finance at Zorlu Energy Group, one of the biggest energy conglomerates in Turkey, for 4 years. During this time, Halil coordinated the “full cycle” of deal execution, reviewing financial, commercial, legal, environmental & social, technical and other relevant due diligence reports with relevant internal and external teams across many transactions. He participated in negotiation & execution of term sheets, facility agreements, security documents, transaction structuring and rating studies of group companies.
Halil holds a MSc. degree in Financial Engineering and a BS. degree in Mathematics both from Boğaziçi University. Halil has also received the CFA certification. He was 904th among the 1.6 million students of his class in the National University Entrance Exam in Turkey.
Görkem Muştu
Görkem has 7 years of advisory experience in project finance and capital & debt transactions in sectors including power & utilities, infrastructure, healthcare, transportation and conglomerates.
Previously, Görkem worked as Capital and Debt Advisory Manager in EY Transaction Advisory Services Turkey. During this time, Görkem provided project finance raising advisory, financial restructuring advisory, bid advisory, financial modelling, business modelling and financial model review services.
Görkem holds a bachelor’s degree from Istanbul Technical University, Management Engineering Program, Turkey. He has ranked first on his graduation from both the program as well as the Management Faculty with a 3.87/4.00 GPA.
Puroo Soni
Puroo has more than 9 years of experience in Project Finance (Bid advisory and Procurement advisory) , Capital Raising and M&A. Formerly, Puroo held similar roles at Synergy Consulting, Deutsche Bank and Moody’s
Puroo has worked on a varied range of transactions across geographies including Middle East, Europe and Africa. He has been actively involved in various aspects of a transaction including financial modelling, transaction structuring, project documentation, financing and bid optimization.
Puroo holds an MBA (Finance) from IIM Kozhikode and Bachelors in Finance from Delhi University.
Umang Agarwal
Umang has excellent competence in the field of financial modelling and VBA with over twelve years of rich experience in working across different industries like energy infrastructure, desalination, utilities, oil & gas, mining and transport infrastructure. He has successfully supported clients all across the globe by providing robust and flexible financial models.
Umang has 2 years of experience in government side advisory for transport infrastructure in India. He has handled the responsibility of providing Bid modelling support on many projects including rolling stock project in UK, greenfield airport advisory in India etc.
Umang is managing a team of financial modellers and has also contributed to the development of the FAST financial modelling standard. He has been a member of the training team delivering Project Finance modelling training to corporates in Middle East countries and has also delivered Project Finance modelling training to 40 team members at PwC.
Priya Sardana
Priya has excellent competence in the field of financial modelling and VBA with over 9 years of experience in working across different sectors like energy, transport, power, utilities and social infrastructure. She has successfully supported clients all across the globe by providing robust and flexible financial models.
Before working as an Associate Director at Cranmore, Priya spent 7 years with Mazars as a Project Finance modelling manager where she managed and delivered several operational and transactional models spanning from transport, renewables, power and social infrastructure sector.
Siva Samhit
Siva has more than 3 years of experience in Project Finance (Bid advisory and Procurement advisory), Financial Modelling and Transaction Structuring. Formerly, Siva held a similar role at Synergy Consulting
Key skills include financial modelling, transaction structuring, project documentation, financing and bid optimization
Siva formerly held a similar role at Synergy Consulting.
He is an MBA from IIM Indore.
Berkay Yildirim
Berkay has over 5 years of experience in Corporate Finance, Investment Management and Strategic Advisory. Berkay has worked on a significant number of investment banking projects including M&A, fundraising and valuation studies in various sectors including energy, basic industries and consumer goods.
Prior to join Cranmore Partners, Berkay worked for ONX Capital and TSKB | Industrial Development Bank of Turkey
Berkay also completed several training programs and internships within various financial institutions in the UK and Turkey
Berkay holds a BA in Business & Finance (Major) and Economics (Minor) from Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom